Sex and Murder Magazine

By Michelle Tooker

Girl alone forms a question mark
as she bends her body to the tide,
scans salt water for sea glass.

Ocean rinses dirt from diamonds,
New Jersey sun, a kamikaze,
striking single stones with light bombs.

Pockets sink with green, white, amber shards—
some too sharp, she hands them back.
Surf devours its jewels.

She searches for blue, purple,
Pepto-Bismol-bottle pink,
glass houses shattered and smoothed by the tide.

***

Atlantic hides red,
rarest color,
shade blood dyes and sand.

***

Barnegat Bay same day last year,
a girl like me walked the beach alone,
red hair flowing east, eyes south.

From dune to dune she wandered, sun
pinching skin, hawk-eyed photographer
seizing her motions for himself—

creasing arms, buckling knees, pursing lips.
She dipped down into ocean,
emerged in front of him.

Collecting sea glass? he asked.
Yes, the final word she spoke.
Trapped in a sand house no one can find.