On Vashon Island Daniel Pollock
O
n Vashon Island, you found
On Vashon Island, you told him how
art without a name, a cement
you love trees in suburbia, how poetic it is
sculpture that would one day
when they crack and break those perfect
be green with moss and erode from the salt
lawns, those perfect streets.
air. On Vashon Island, you remembered that even cement and rocks aren’t forever.
He tells you nature saved him, playing outside saved him on those days when his
There’s a quiet question that buzzes like
brothers with a rope looked to tie him to
a sand fly around brie in the sun when two
the upper bunk. He learned to get out of
bodies lay side by side on a beach blanket,
the tie, and out of the house.
shirtless, their skin wet and salt-sticky from submerging in the water, where fish ran from their feet.
Waiting for the ferry back you walk out with him onto the rocky, barnacled shore. He flipped the bigger rocks like your
He rubbed sunscreen into your back
old friends—your middle school, church
and you told him to stay there for an hour,
friends—used to flip rocks. Looking for
forever, don’t stop.
crab. Even the tiniest crab scuttle away when he opens their home’s rock-door.
Two children, a boy and girl, probably twelve,
run
across
the
beach.
There are millions here, all under the
You
rocks. Another world. Another sphere of
remember being twelve. Being with girls.
existence. He held a big crab up for you to
Trying to be with girls. Now you want to
see; close enough for you to see its eyes,
kiss him, but you don’t want the kids to
the shape of its claws, but far enough for
see, as if it would be wrong for them to
you to know that you are safe. Your old,
see.
middle school friends would have tossed one on you, you would’ve screamed. But there, on Vashon Island with him, you felt safe.
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