Honeymoon in the Tropic of Cornucopia  

Under a swollen sun the white sand
rubs us like a cat's tongue. Palms click, sift
the wind and toss it away. Our house
on stilts is girded on one side by stairs

that creak when no one is there. We like
how small our room is, how everything
fits: a bed, our shoes beside it. An empty
picture frame outlines a square of blue

wall. Our sheets smell of yesterday's wind,
years of hot winds, clarity burnt
into the thinned threads. Tonguing
your fingers, I find sand beneath

pale moons. This same sand nestles
in our pillows' creases -- no --
these are impossibly miniscule shells.
Unbelievers, we go out. The entire beach

is shell, intricately rippled remains
of spiraled homes, broken, smoothed
ocean-sifted, soothed. Something lived
in each one -- what, when? We walk across

time, parallel to a lurid sunset, speculating.
A forgiving light licks our blistered
shoulders. We don't talk about our return,
our move to the desert. We don't know

that in three years and a week we'll be
divorcing, we're the unraveling
tide we stroll through. A gull dips
and disappears, a splash, delible brightness.  

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Laura Longsong's first book of poems Imagine a Door is forthcoming from Turning Point Books. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, Heartlodge, Southern Review, and other magazines. She is finishing a lyrical novel, What Will Burn; excerpts won a James Michener Fellowship and Texas-PEN award. She teaches creative writing at Lynchburg College in Virginia.
 

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