issue five / mosaic
Sea Glass
Matthew Green
What is it? I am humbled
by your quick answer, the stated obviousness of them
cradled in the palm of your hand --
a collection due to the afternoon, and your afternoon of collecting.
A Redcliffe thing I think, and I think I say something along those lines.
I’m not a local. There again, my mental: within
and without. As if I
exist outside all of it. That the wash
does not apply. But it does. The lung water, gargle and spit of
foam like ordinary toothpaste, the salt stinging my eyes. Let it.
Broken bottles by the beach, of shipwrecks,
hospitality shards blown by the pier, toppled from white-napkinned tables.
The area remakes itself. Chemically washed, rounded,
smoothed into the opaque pebbles of us, until you and I arrive in your hand.
The years too far-off somewhere in your eyes, you don’t know
quite where to look yet, or what you’re looking for — the step and gait of youth,
your engine-room work ethic, the simple way you spend your afternoons.
What trials? What love awaits? I wonder.
You show us, almost too slowly to notice. Living can’t help revealing.
I only hope the sharpness of my edges are blunted, that the
salt soothes your skin and nerves, bleaches your hair, turns it to straw.
That it changes you (not that you need changing)
and for the shores we settle to be happy ones.
They can be that, can’t they?
by your quick answer, the stated obviousness of them
cradled in the palm of your hand --
a collection due to the afternoon, and your afternoon of collecting.
A Redcliffe thing I think, and I think I say something along those lines.
I’m not a local. There again, my mental: within
and without. As if I
exist outside all of it. That the wash
does not apply. But it does. The lung water, gargle and spit of
foam like ordinary toothpaste, the salt stinging my eyes. Let it.
Broken bottles by the beach, of shipwrecks,
hospitality shards blown by the pier, toppled from white-napkinned tables.
The area remakes itself. Chemically washed, rounded,
smoothed into the opaque pebbles of us, until you and I arrive in your hand.
The years too far-off somewhere in your eyes, you don’t know
quite where to look yet, or what you’re looking for — the step and gait of youth,
your engine-room work ethic, the simple way you spend your afternoons.
What trials? What love awaits? I wonder.
You show us, almost too slowly to notice. Living can’t help revealing.
I only hope the sharpness of my edges are blunted, that the
salt soothes your skin and nerves, bleaches your hair, turns it to straw.
That it changes you (not that you need changing)
and for the shores we settle to be happy ones.
They can be that, can’t they?
Matthew Green's poems and stories have appeared in Meniscus, miniMag, BULL, and Boats Against the Current. He lives in Brisbane, Australia. Follow him on Instagram @matthew_green98.