We told him to meet us at the end of the beach; we didn't think he'd gotten our message. I went in yanking up my bathing suit bottoms before any of them would dunk their heads. But the waves were something vertical, and everything turned grey before the telephone disappeared and he came splashing carelessly along. Tidal waves are old news; these dreams are fonder of civil wars and surveillance. But remember the girls at three feet, heads stuck under the inner tubes? I reached for the fencepost even when I knew it would give.
2
They're digging up other people's backyards and other people's cities. Teenagers are still getting home past curfew; they're through with crashing cars but not parties. Their posture is getting bad. Their parents are getting sick. It is always some disease or other. Two miles past our exit the Ohio's humming soft. We are all waiting for room to breathe. I can't hear you while you kiss me over the gearshift, and this is somebody else's property. Somebody else's bus maps underfoot. I can't hear you whistling under the bedspread, and a hundred yards east the trains are still out of tune.
3
She parked at the edge of my driveway, facing the rhododendrons. She would roll up the windows and I would mumble some platitude or other. It was all a long, long time ago. She wore long underwear under jeans. Her elbows would poke into the droops of fabric that hung from the car ceiling. She kissed my mouth, hard, and unbuckled her seat belt, making the door-open alarm ding for a moment; she grabbed my ribs and put her face in my lap, careful between the gearshift and the armrest. I heard a muffled sob against my thigh: "Listen, it is just�sometimes I don't know what to do with myself." She kept hunching her narrow shoulders against me. She was translucent against the rhododendrons, even the lilacs. She still is. Well, maybe I am just�
4
Our parents are dying. It is always some death or another. We hang the bodies on the clothesline, sleepy scarecrows before the wake begins.
5
Honey, the words still work.