Shoalwater

Waves grind the shoreline and darken into pools. Crabs shuffle sideways, lost in the washed-up eelgrass. Seagulls spit littleneck clams to the rocks and don’t even eat the shattered bodies. They fly as high as the clouds and wrap talons in the wind. But this kind of love isn’t rare. When I dream about my brother he disappears if I look. He wears a bird-bone bracelet, but I only know this by feel. Even his hair is something I imagine. His nose occurs solely as contours. I walk down the beach and throw stones at the oncoming waves. This is the best we can do. We leak every time we are opened. Out just beyond the waves, love says the same of itself. We can only witness the implication, only feel for the shape. Love is a pigeon nestled beside a dead pigeon at night in the wet corner of a warehouse. Blackness and the texture of feathers. The thud of a body surrounded by hollow. Love is a clamshell’s first touch against rock, whatever tenderness can be found in that contact before the crack. It’s been years since I was last out on the water. The night sky tightens like that familiar mouth. Clouds hide their bulk on the backsides of islands. Each wave is real the way his body is real. Made of something not itself. Something bigger. Call it water. Call it wind. Call it tendon-flexing of the moon. Each wave lifts as he lifts, crashes as he crashes. Love exists in the way seagulls hold still in the wind. The way crabs carry pieces of clam through the moonlight and vanish sideways into sand.