What I see are bodies on the beach,
not histories, bodies seeking sun,
people less layered, more lathered,
jumbled footprints pressed in sand.
I see a couple staring through tunnels of lack.
What I don’t see are parents minus child,
an accident, no charges filed,
haunted castles, not sand but sorrow.
I see rectangular spaces, colorful towels.
What I don’t see are hamlets of indiscretion,
a ponytailed neighbor leaving his grass unmowed
between the lawns of annoyed neighbors who mow.
What I see is a boy digging a deep hole in the sand.
What I don’t see is that same boy a week earlier
pushing over the bird bath in a neighbor’s yard,
his parents and the police talking at the front door.
What I see is a man smearing lotion on a woman’s back.
What I don’t see is that husband looking across the street,
hoping for a chance to help the young widow opposite
carry bags of sad groceries into her hollow house.
What I see is a solid mother with a toddler child.
What I don’t see is her grief for his stillborn brother,
how she desperately needs this one to live, holds him,
hoists him high and safe in the buffeting waves.
What I see is the assumption of a happy old couple.
What I don’t see is the Vesuvius of their marriage,
molten rock under pressure deep within their faults,
two histories on the verge of erupting into one.
What I see is a strutting woman in an age inappropriate bathing suit.
What I don’t see is her need for revenge against her lagging husband
who has just confessed to a yearlong affair with her single sister, Ella,
who is just now reading an email full of acerbic affection.
What I see is a man two towels down, with Semper Fi tattooed on his arm.
What I don’t see is that man picking his Purple Heart son up at the airport
after two tours of duty in Afghanistan and heading home on a rainy road
on bald tires he was going to replace in the morning.
What I see is a football spiraling between two angular young men .
What I don’t see and they do not see is the circumstance in which
the story of their childhood companionship will come to an end.
What I don’t see is the story each sunbather returns to complete
after a Saturday’s sunny interlude of being on the beach.