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22 Elegy Where I Initially Refuse to Eat Sand My mother liked to eat beach glass and sand people had stepped in. Not many girls could forgive such a palate, though I was willing to try her half-moon-shaped cookies called Swedish sand tarts even before I understood the old-world ingredients couldn’t make me cough up sea shanties or pirates’ bones, notesin -a-bottle. Like the letter my newly dead uncle must now sit down to write since his heart attack slumped him in the sand near his yellow house on stilts. He died digging to heal his hurricanesplit sewer line. I was willing to forgive his last words to me— two weeks before—as we swam through the lukewarm gulf: Where’d you get those boobs? he laughed through his backstroke. He wore red seaweed over his bald spot. He refused dentures, drawled with a lisp that hinted at what was missing. I was 23 willing to forgive his last words because I coughed up a salt wind, because I hummed, Way, hey, blow the man down! as I kicked the dark glass: a Budweiser’s end. By then the bottle’s note had vanished, or had gotten soaked clear through. By then I knew Where’d you get those boobs? meant how violently childhood bites its mirage into the waves, or I painted the beach house yellow after your favorite storybook bird. My mother liked to eat beach glass and sand people had stepped in. This Christmas I’ll ask for the recipe that will raise all the gulf’s grit in my mouth. ...

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