I went back through the files in my old computer to dig up poetry I no longer remember writing. I wrote this one in February 2016 then edited it in December 2018, January 2019, and February 2019. 

New York, 1973

Eyes closed, she’s standing at the shoreline.
That’s almost all we know until her eyes open:
The air is the grey of a watercolor white,
Poured over and around and inside the lungs
Of her—in her chest, in her ribs, in her. But in her words
She’s fine. Fine like snow as it builds in piles atop empty bottles
And fine like ice sticking in nostrils.
She’s fine like air pushing through the strands
Of her hair, as each piece ticks off the time:
Like waves inching toward her toes—forward and back—
Like kids falling up and down slides, the breeze manipulates her hair as it likes.
It’s like everyone as they inch toward her toes and claw at the seams of her clothes
As they manipulate her life as they might.

So, from the shoreline with open eyes,
She lets the air tug at the strands of her hair
And the streams at her eyes and the seams against
Her legs while her toes sink further into sand she can’t count.
The water pulls and pulls with each receding wave, but
It leaves her there. From her place amongst the grains,
The air remains a watercolor, all made of running ink
Down canvases without lines into fog on the outskirts
Of color. So she breathes on the shoreline while her
Friends ring in her ears, tug at her toes and sling empty bottles
Against the trials of life. And while they wait for ice
To climb into their veins, she writes thirteen lucky lines of type
Apologizing for their indiscretions and their crimes.

Then, they meet her on the shoreline, their heaving
Finally catching up with her quiet breathing. Her hair stops climbing—
Kids stop riding and tumbling down the slides—while tears continue down the sides
Of her cheeks; her eyes leak like the fog will do when it gets too
Heavy. Her friends are heaving and laughing and tugging at her ankles
Until her feet fall off, crying and whining and begging
For the years to pass but never end, for the piles to get higher
And the drinks to get stronger. While she stands on the shoreline,
She asks if anyone wants to swim. It’s a whisper as she steps out of her seams
And her streams become the waves of the sea.
She climbs in until she’s so deep the water has nothing
To pull, and her friends are left laughing
From the shoreline.

Stay gold,
Sabrina