Beach by Tracy Fuad

Beach
Tracy Fuad

The mocha really was as good as I’d imagined

My resentment for small dogs still constant

The bird cry really sounded like a child

May you have a blessed day, the woman whose voice was a rock in my shoe said to strangers

People trading tips on the best vacation places while vacationing

We were all complicit in this tangle

I wasn’t confused, just annoyed that not everything was going exactly according to plan

I wished for the season to be over, meaning, tourists

I wanted it empty

It was Sunday

Hopefully they would all leave and take their chatter elsewhere

I couldn’t handle blather

“Very fun,” one half of the couple was repeating

Projecting her voice impressively over the sounds of the ocean

No, the crying was really a baby

Some people don’t know when to stop

I will never own a dog

Definitely, they all insisted multiple times, apropos of their keeping in touch

Finally, they parted

What I wanted was total silence

Too many species gathered on this shore, all of them overly vocal

The speaking woman continuing to make kissy noises to her captive creature

Then carrying him down the stairs, which he could not manage alone

It did feel good admittedly to be out in the world, even if it was all gritty and scratched me

I felt like a person again

A woman hushing Skyler, whom I wondered, child or dog?

I calculated the odds of having a daughter, as if gender were real

Noting the sons of my friends, as if that were how chance worked

I’d dreamt I’d had two sons, exactly as I’d hoped not to

Though once, as a younger person, I would have said I’d rather parent boys than girls

I’d had such a bad girlhood once I was no longer seen as a child

I didn’t know how to act, feel, see, or be, and nobody told me

I thought myself wholly devoid

Actually, I like to come and spend mornings outside at the bay

Despite the constant clang of buildings being built

I need to buy a winter jacket

Write a poem about stampedes

Write Neil and Cheswayo

Send one million emails

Humidify my home, so I don’t dry of dryness

I’m gonna be totally okay

Maybe buy two jackets

I’m going to be just fine

MARGINALIA

1.
Some days I dislike everyone. Their loud voices, their happiness, their plans. It feels like I’m watching the world from behind glass I didn’t ask to be on the other side of.

2.
Have you ever felt the scattered, too-muchness of being alive in a body that aches.

3.
I want silence but I also want to be witnessed. I don’t know how to want both.

4.
Listen. I am eating strawberry mochi at 9:26 in the evening and my beloved comes home in a few hours. I’m going to be okay.