The waves are crashing against us now, love

As we stand, feet in the sand, despite our lives

Our hands suspended over the water, our names:

The knife-blade sun slicing white through the blue

The air tastes and whips as the open-plain thunderstorms

Of a Bradbury book

The grasses shake in the growing wind

I feel the ocean rising as our icy plateaus melt

Millions of heartbeats away

I feel a closeness growing as the atmosphere breathes in

Our gifts, never exhaling, our eternal un-exchange

And the waves are crashing against us now, love

The electricity in the sky tannic and thick in our mouths

I feel the words (and I am sorry) taste bitter as the lightning

Our choices sweep the shells from the sea

Fragile in the acid bay

Beneath the sky of fire, our infinite hidden reminders:

I am small, and we are all destroyers of the water

That slaps into our shins

Sweet starlight, never let us forget

That the waves are crashing against us now, love

The bright-clear water, plastic birds with slick dripping feathers

The substance of bottle caps in the sand, heavy in stomachs

I think perhaps the day is too forgiving of us

Our millions of heartbeats, our delicate radiation

Somehow the loudest shattering sound in the fire-sky

Our world burning a high fever, while here we stand

Our feet cooled in its water

And the waves are crashing against us now

The empty patches of darkened earth

The birthmark we’ve cut into ourselves

And the wooden giants made into certificates, the welcome to our quiet desolation

Sweet sunlight, burn the immortal growths into our bodies

So we may feel a fraction of its burdened death

But for now, the anticipation gathers

On the Bradbury horizon, you and I and the stars can see,

The waves are crashing against us now