By: Sydney Vincent
Death has pretty eyes,
eyes that glisten when the
sun hits them just right,
like a glass green bottle on the
eastern windowsill of your gram’s house
in the morning wake of the sky.
They are those eyes that look up
at a glance
to catch your gaze from
a few tables away in that lonely diner
on the corner of your sweet memories
and your wounding regrets.
The hallowed, hollowed, resolute
specks of green and gold,
following your hand as you
reach to that top shelf for a book
in view but out of grasp
inside that library near the
post office and the park.
Those eyes watch and study,
lifting from the salt-stained
book in their hands,
as you build that sandcastle
near the water’s edge,
the waves crashing just before it.
They all tell you the water will
never smother the castle,
it wouldn’t dare.
But you pack for the evening,
every sandy blanket and oiled sunscreen bottle
stashed neatly away in the backpack you carry
low and heavy off of your shoulders.
Around midnight, that tide rolls in,
bashing and beating on those
castle walls, the structure crumbling
to ash and to dust and to the ground
where it lies as one.
Those eyes, now numerous in that pale moonlight,
follow that sand as it drifts
back to shore and under those waves.
The next morning follows and, not one,
not one of those at the coast
that steaming day before
can recall the castle ever belonging to those sands.