Illustration by Sophie Levy
This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2019 Spring Print Edition
When the storm was just a swirling argument
my father swept the shore each day
for sea glass
to exchange for quarters
The teacher came to collect him
in the hallway by the vending machines
where geckos did not fall from slick cinder walls
Years ago
wind and water funneled missed Saigon
into silt romance
to settle on a strip of land
off
south Jersey
so when it landed on soft dunes and stilts
it carried our young out to sea
When waking one morning in a strange town
do not think to become the
boat people
of some midtown transatlantic
strip mall
I do not claim to know disaster
that delivered my father as his own cargo
In the embroidery of my
diner napkin memory
I see just our simple golden bodies
and evening summer haze
which in Sea Bright
would have blurred the lighthouse
the burmese python
wound tight around the backyard palm
spilling like white froth to the ground
following a boy’s finger
to beyond the property’s edge