Night. The sea hugs the tip of the quay. In wind, a forgotten coat, stiff with salt, raises an arm to greet me as I pass. I’m far from the desert that made me, far from myself in sleepless longing for a woman. I must want to lie here on white stone turning colder with each new rush of spray.
Down the shore, unloaded boats bank off the wharf like desert horses rocking in their stalls. I must want to hear this and remember cowboys, drunk, hugging each other, a mare giving birth and biting herself, mad with pain.
Why did I think I could leave the flatness behind? Day after day, under a blank sky, neighbor girls hauled laundry baskets out under the webworms’ silk, cracked pecans in the grass, laughing, stringing clothes between black trees loaded with little peaches. The trees just made it through each burning spring. All the while, my father washed his father with a sponge—the old man was dying, but slowly, year after year, softening like fruit.
Over and over (would he never quit, never live a life of his own?) Dad stroked the dry yellow skin, asked me, “Can you fill this bowl again—warm—for me, please?” Diesels whined on the highway out past the house, wind chimes rippled like water.
And tonight it’s all one sound: the waves, the sucking of kelp, a girl’s laughter from a misty, unseeable distance. I imagine her near, in blue light-panes from the boats, and tell her the whole long story of my love, my failure to get away: He’s put the old man to bed now. His father’s whiskers float in the bowl of water; he pauses above me, thinking something I can’t name. Outside, a foal is trying to stand.