MYRTLE BEACH 1989

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By Scott Warrender

 

 

Why would breaking glass

be all I remember?

 

Why not the wind

ripping off the porte cochère

over-ending it down the beach?

 

Why not the music

blasting from the transistor radio she carried in her other hand?

 

Why not the stingy candlelight

or the tide

that in confusing smashes

swore

“I will find you”?

 

None of that

 

Only a bottle breaking on the porcelain crapper by our heads

and the spoiled smell

strange slurred words neither of us knew

when her spit flung outward by the spin of the storm

and her wind and cloud chomped down on last light

 

Crammed

laid flat in the clawfoot tub

we waited

for the hurricane to pass

and wondered

still wonder

what we had done

to conjure it

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