1.
The photograph is necessarily what it does not contain

It is you

rising from blue

bedclothes

a sheen of sand on skin, like salt

glass you want to preserve 

each tentative space--

tracks to the sea, a rock, maybe,

some mounded sand. Everything winter gray

as the milk-mind

where day is a shadow

advancing, almost memory

itself—thumbprint on screen.

Outside the expected

wind, spray, sand, and bird bodies

oil-strangled, their rot

driving us inside. One

summer we braceleted

nestlings—new-feathers

softer than kittens

in our cupped hands,

their beaks opened--

trusting the grey sky.

After the flocks

fled we found them

abandoned—our perfume hung

about the frosted

mud where remains

released grey fluff to the wind.

It’s a comforting tragedy

to enter unfamiliar rooms.

One traveler exits and another

stands near the rock, bird bodies

around her ankles, the stranger

with the foul smell, the one

you can almost see between

water and air, where everything

lost   is waiting.

-Shana Youngdahl