I am once again missing the situation,

panicking as the loser panics:

feeling blindly in the dark under counters,

behind the cupboard, in the drawer of knives.

When I spied strangers leaning back together in the sand

with all the violence of seeing two people touch,

I felt the phantom presence of the absent arm,

the brief steam from black rocks after rain.

The bitter truth is that things happen

and stay happened.

For instance, yesterday.

For instance, the sun last night across

135th street, big big round and red

pain. How lovely he was to me.

Once again I am on the beach,

 

missing it. The strangers:

“This is good,” he says to her,

in the sea of hot sand.

She looks like she is about to say yes.