Josh Bauer
Sarasota, FL
You were in love with a woman.
You had just turned twenty,
in the sun, where you really worked at it
and then ate oranges in the afternoon.
Your life was the color of light hitting the sky,
breaking off into warm blue arrows,
a gentle fire.You made love on the beach.
It was so dark that her pale skin looked far away
She appeared lit from the inside- a terrible moon.
The sea dancing for her.
You were childish and terrified by the electricity of your bodies.
The spray of the ocean collected along the ridges of your spin,
pooled slowed and walked into her body
where you imagined it grew and bloomed
into the mist of her exhaling.
This is hard for you to write about.There is a picture of the two you
walking side by side.
You are holding hands and it is very ordinary,
except that you both have the same foot off the ground
so that you appear to be synchronized.
You thought you would marry her.She wrote you a note once,
when you lived on Wayne street in that tiny charity apartment.
It read, “pick up something nice for J, she is madly in love with you. Come back to her soon.”
This haunts you.
