I am no stranger to heartbreak.
It’s like losing your fragile balance on a telephone wire, or sinking into a watery surface.
I’m making temples and castles out of rocks.
Crosses made of sticks, moon crescents scrawled into the sand.
I crawl to the lip of the ocean tide and let it soak me through the skin, but I don’t wander too far out into the sea. Just let it salt me with seaweed, with shells, with holiness. Like water thrown on a flame. Fiery sparks sizzling in liquid. Home is the shore and behind me lie vaults of memories and pieces of skeletons all over the evergreen earth from where I came, glowing emerald in the lights of the cityscape. Celestial demigod. A padlocked heart. Drawing circles, names, sand-written curses. Ashtray by my side. Smoke in clouds, in lungs. Once, I knew my name,
but now it is lost to me.
- “Beaches of Los Angeles” by Vivica Salem