Sea Room

In Back

In Back Trampled chive, dandelion sharpen the breeze at twilight as I watch two youths at dark, near summer's end when the inseparable uncouple and begin to ward off one another. Like oysters, mussels, a sea life that grips and pulses through the short grass, they halt as one-closed flesh. The fight is even, neither gains and it turns awkward when one upon the other grinds his hips and face to face exchanges breath, his oaths slurred, strained, faltering like vows. A moment, at first so effortless, grows forced, bewildering, until their color changes tone, shifts and deepens as when debts are told or a dream is confessed in broad daylight. The sun twirling down behind the westside roofs, like a foil balloon in a dance-lesson studio, exaggerates the red in everything. Soon the circle of sisters, the fathers still dressed in wingtips, white-shirted, are stirring. Seeing no blood, the group breaks apart as if leaving until someone says "Kiss him!" In the nearest kitchen, plates click against the bare Formica. We wait for one error, that swooning at night's abrupt ledge 52 from which the day falls. Then I saw it, a bright spill as the two rocked forward, rolled apart, bruising the onion grass until the air burned. 53 ...