seasalt

by Zadie McGrath

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

to mark lines gauged out

to halt erosion. Those depressions

we raced to slide down.

Yellow plastic braiding and unbraiding in the wind, 

more of a welcome sign than a warning.

Maybe that’s why, for that summer and after,

I was gone and gullible.

//

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 say,

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 poetry 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.