He scowls down at her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m no one.”
She lets go of his wrist.
“I think that’s the point.”
The ocean’s rhythm
isn’t.
I count the seconds between waves
and realize that
they crash when they crash,
with no regular timing,
like our ex-drummer
when he was drunk.
Like my heart’s final beats,
1,000
in three minutes.
The waves’ arrhythmia
is all I hear in my brother’s silence.
We sit side by side on the pier,
our legs dangling over the edge.
He and Krista pass a cigarette
back and forth
through me.
Mickey has quit smoking
six times in two months.
I splay my fingers,
admiring how the smoke curls
around and within
their violet glow,
like dry ice at a rock concert.