at_the_beach kerry i’ve known you forever. there are pictures of us in preschool–three day threes–fingerpainting side by side. later we played in the creek by your house, digging up pieces of pottery and smooth flat skipping-stones and dare each other to follow the stream into the tunnel, and i almost did, but lost my nerve. we would throw tennis balls up and down the stairs and your himalayan cats with their flat faces and bodies skinny beneath all that fur would chase them, and i walked into the kitchen one night and your parents were making out and they laughed at me when i ran away and you teased me about the things i didn’t know yet but you did because you had an older brother and your dad took him “out back” to have “the talk” and my parents somehow forgot to tell me anything besides the bare minimum so i learned it all on the school bus. we went to the pool all the time where your brother showed off his butterfly stroke and i did somersaults into the pool until i finally cracked my head on the edge and nearly blacked out underwater. and in the warm water in the gulf we got stung by so many jellyfish and you turned brown while i burned, and our parents would drink wine on the porch and that was every summer for so long. later after we weren’t friends anymore, i would have these dreams that we were playing soccer. sometimes you were on my team and sometimes you weren’t, but either way, we ended up in some kind of collision where i totally lost it and started screaming at you. i told you all the things you’d ever done or said that hurt me and i told you how much i hated you, how mean you were, and in some dreams i shoved you and that was it, but in others i outright attacked you like i’ve never done in real life. and it felt good. when emily and her boyfriend came to visit me on the west coast i’d only just arrived, and we went to newport and sat on some driftwood drinking beer and eating fried cod and watching the tide go out, and it went out so far we could walk where there had been starfish and the sand was soaked and rippled from the waves. less than a year later my mom called me and told me your brother had driven his truck just outside of newport where he was living and they found him dead on that same beach. he’d shot himself. a shotgun seemed unnecessarily gory to me but i suppose that’s all he had. and after ryan died i never dreamed about you again. 211209 ... raze i couldn't build a sandcastle to save my life, just like i could never build a snowman without someone else to guide me. i could make things with my hands, but they were things i couldn't touch. things that would seep into me. the one thing i could do was let you bury my body beneath loose khaki grains. it didn't matter that i couldn't make a move to dig myself out. the walls were always quick to crumble, and i knew the tide would wash away whatever failed to collapse against me. 220206 what's it to you? who go blather from