Brine sheets, rippled and capricious.

Like waves on the littered glass beach.

The sea holds more than saltwater, it holds people's time.

The sea cannot lay dying on a bed, instead it should have been on the beach mat we made together,

when I was five.

Your first S.O.S. was when you coughed out Cola from your lungs,

you said it happens during the summer, that summer is dark red.

You handed me your old wrist watch stuck on forty, and chucked the bottle away.

Sand grains collected on each riptide on the blanket,

It is so easy to be collected when the sun shines right on your spot,

And I hand back all the decorated shells made with me,

when my hands were sheltered by ones bigger than mine.

To the people who don’t know that your hospice was a boat,

i'm expected,

to share scattered grain shaped thoughts in between my toes, 

constantly ignoring scarring glass bad enough to mute light.

And so I was the only exception expected,

 to come to your side, as the monitoring line that keeps you above the horizon.

Sunk low and deep into the sea.

To the point where I couldn't go to the beach, and put my hand in the water and feel your hand back in the currents anymore.

You’re gone now, and I'm not five.

But everytime someone chucks a cola bottle in the water when I visit,

I only pull it out,

40 years afterwards, 

when the tide is low enough,

To see if it eroded the will of the ocean,

just enough,

for you to send a message back to me.