Seasalt

Ocean Beach, 2021. We can be
compressed until we sparkle
like an old film shot grainy in dim light.

Clear dash of highway,
beach laden with caution tape
marking lines gauged
to halt erosion. Those depressions
we raced to slide down.

Yellow plastic braiding and unbraiding in the wind,
more welcome sign than warning.
Maybe that’s why, for that summer and after,
I was gullible and gone.

ocean beach on the 4th of july.
illegible magic and a caution-tape mood,
that’s the kind of night it takes to talk to you.
i’ll devolve into poetry if this continues any longer.
i say, you’re a sign of insanity.
regardless i whisper into my floor,
i could have been your best friend.

And maybe you’re the only part of that year
that really happened, but I smell 2021 bursting
into my bedroom after a three-year hiatus,
attracted to September sun and early bedtimes,
quick as a poem I don’t have time for.

By which I mean
it’ll last for life,
this scent you could track me by
of seasalt laced with paranoia.

Zadie McGrath writes when she’s supposed to talk and talks when she’s supposed to write. Her poetry has been published in Apprentice Writer, The Basilisk Tree, and Backwards Trajectory, among other places. She lives in San Francisco. Seasalt first appeared in boats against the current.