Beach Combing

The rumble of distant yells
Knocks her world off its stand.
Rolling towards the floor –
It’s going to smash, it’s too fragile for the floor –
I catch it.
The cool curves are too small, for the world –
But not for her,
Because the curve of that bottle green glass holds her caught –
What a reverie –
She’s taken back to days spent searching the sand
For that single green float
Tucked among the driftwood.
Waiting.

But her throat must be hurting
Because she is yelling so loud.
I raise my eyebrows up real
Careful, real high
So I don’t hear the screaming
So I don’t break my treasure.

It’s mine.

Branded with a number, like a prisoner of war
Let out too late to like the sun anymore,
The sea float is the product of a glassblower’s
End of day pessimism.

Sixty four: the ridges of the numbers are imperfect –
The glassblower’s trembling arm translates to ripples,
Interrupting the calm sea of the glass’s surface,
The base hastily finished, a scab of opaque glass
That tries to keep the sea float still – tries to keep her world stable.

She’s yelling at me – again.

It’s not the words she’s saying,
It’s the memory she’s thinking,
That keep me clutching the greenish glass.

If only, if only she could find a glass ball
To call her own.
She searches the damp, sandy beach,
Sweat held still in the pits
Of the pores on her forehead.

I follow, sullenly.

“Faster,” she says
“Keep looking,” she says.
But the splinters my feet have
From searching the driftwood hurt.

“You’re not going to find it,”
I mutter.

And that bottle green glass,
Though she wishes it was,
Just isn’t the world.

She’s yelling –
Her voice carries
Up the stairs.
Opens the door.
Comes in my room.
She’s yelling and crying,
And what did I do?
Found a little ball of greenish glass
In a patch of sea grass.