I call to say

I remember sitting on your concrete basement floor. Salty. Of seaweeds. Sand in our hair as we pulled off one shoe at a time. It was before I asked you why you lived alone. After my flight to Canada. My respect grew simply with each moment that you didn’t require answers. We had been at the beach. Skipping rocks. And you taught me how to yell at the ocean without making any sound. We peeled out of our wet clothes. Letting them fall in dark musty pools onto the floor. Our opaque bodies took turns under the steaming showerhead. Attempting to rub out the dead like the rough minute pebbles caught under our nails. Afterward we sipped hot chocolate from heavy green mugs on the faded deck in your backyard. And you draped me under the weight of the quilt taken from the end of your bed. The world went heavy with my eyelids. the blanket. water. motion. ceramic cups. language. Color became out of step with time. Unmoving we waited through the silence for night and for things in the sky we could not name.