My son tells me to stick my finger
in an open anemone though it might sting.
On Haystack Rock, tufted puffins return
each year to lay eggs and raise their young.
Cells divide but not forever.
Mom, do you remember before me? The tide
is coming in. He’s wet to the knees.
I think I have always been here.
My new husband and his son make sandcastles
while we watch starfish slip beneath the waves.
The sandcastle goes under. There is no before,
no after. The boys trace stars into the sand,
run into a crowd of gulls. How do jellyfish live
without brains? they ask. We eat ice-cream
for dinner, walk barefoot back to the hotel.
The boys talk until midnight. Our bodies taste
like salt. Tree frogs sing through the open window.
My husband hums and puts the boys to bed.
To call a thing by name is a kind of spell:
Mom, Sara, love. Even so, the past wolf-whistles
bitch, unloveable. Fog rolls in, smears the panes.
Today the ocean is calm. Tomorrow,
the weather will shift. Big rollers, north wind.
One rogue wave could swallow us.
