Here’s an Ocean Tale

My brother still bites his nails to the quick,

but lately he’s been allowing them to grow.

So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon

as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.

The beach belongs to none of us, regardless

of color, or money. We all come to sit

at the feet of the surf, watch waves

drag the sand and crush shells for hours.

My brother’s feet are coated in sparkly powder

that leaves a sticky residue when dry.

He’s twenty-three, still unaware of his value.

It is too easy, reader, for me to call him

beautiful, standing against the sky

in cherrywood skin and almond

eyes in the sun, so instead I tell him

he is handsome. I remind him

of a day when I brought him to the beach

as a boy. He’d wandered, trailing a tourist,

a white man pointing toward his hotel—

all for a promised shark tooth.

I yelled for him, pulled him to me,

drove us home. Folly Beach. He was six.

He almost went.