Between our ninth

and tenth anniversaries,
we walk along the beach.

It’s September.
I can tell by the depth of your eyes

that you’re missing your grandmother.
She died in a fury of refusal,

a woman of faith,
fighting cancer’s victory harder

than she ever fought its challenge.
I can feel you hating death

for being certain.
Just this morning, you stood up from breakfast,

the soft flesh of your face flushed and puffing,
to take your welling tears to the bathroom.

I rose to stop you, wrap you up,
felt you mutter into my shirt

that you cannot handle “this death thing.”
We keep walking,

with the water to our left.
Across the waves, there are cities

neither you nor I have been to.
They seem wilder than the water’s breaking tide,

so far from the immediacy of small cuts in our foot-skin,
so alive with the patina

of light contesting dark.
Did I feel you squeeze my hand?

I’m not sure if this is talk between lovers,
but I squeeze

back anyway, to let you know
I feel it to, the soothing lessons

of the ocean and the sunset.
Only after nightfall does Connecticut

take on an ordered beauty,
graying factories becoming

pearly pawns in a line
along the glowing green rim

of the sound.
Perversely,

a siren stains the air,
reminding me that, with the course

of this dream still uncertain,
it’s still possible

that someone else will die.