1/8/24

i watch from the headlands as you drag a long strand of bull kelp across cold sand. wind rips seafoam from the high tideline and dashes it against rocks as you sink your knife into rubbery flesh, chop off the bulb, and raise the salty tube to your lips, but your quickly fashioned instrument is inaudible through the howls of sea and air. you show me the first bird, the monochrome dome of its chest a familiar sight by now, and tell me your kelp horn will summon sixteen more. we force our small bodies down the coastline through the hammering wind, on the alert for sneaker waves, trespassing in this graveyard of the sea—death chasing life chasing death—and as ever, we are granted excessive rewards: thirty-eight lifeless pale blue feet.