“I don’t think building sandcastles in the air is such a terrible thing to do, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.” – Anne Frank
1
It’s becoming more impossible each day
to live when everything says stop. Don’t
move. Waiting for results, my mother prays,
each day another dream betrayed. I count
old classmates’ camel selfies in Morocco
and I think that’s something I’d do after-
school, after a magic bullet. Actually, let’s go
to the beach, drive through redwood forests, rivers
like PICC lines winding down the coast, California’s
curved left hip. I know it’s best I think less
about sex, but why, if not to lick salt, or a
juiced lime wedge from a man’s tanned chest,
would God gift us our famished tongues?
Please tell me we will always be young.
2
Please tell me we will always be young,
even though we’ve never met and the world
is mostly awful. Though time hasn’t wrung
us dry, I long to laugh so hard it hurts.
Did I tell you I went to a Jewish preschool?
That I made sand angels under a cloudless sky,
learned Hannukah songs, I have a little dreidel,
I made it out of clay. At four, my bashful eyes
possibly charming, the myth of immortality
wasn’t lost on me. It wasn’t till college I read
your diary, wedged between class and reality.
What I needed, back in high school, was a friend
to tell my secrets, with whom to enact my revenge.
If we’d met, you could’ve taught me Dutch or French.
3
If we’d met, you could’ve taught me Dutch or French,
swapped foreign phrases like friendship bracelets.
We could’ve sat on a Charm City park bench
discussing Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Hamlet—
at least until the next train came. I’m sorry
my bedroom was larger than your secret annex.
Had we met, I would’ve sent you the stories
I’d written between dry heaves, the decks
of cards doled out as staunch white coats
scrawled my fate in strokes of shorthand.
What is truth but sand in an infant’s throat,
a too-hard-to-swallow promised land
too small to contain our hope? Most days, in bed,
I thought of all the lives I could’ve led.
4
I thought of all the lives I could’ve led
as one does in solitude (you already know this).
When sadness seemed a fine aperitif, my head
pandered plenty of such selfish indulgences
as— if I were a knight, speared through
the heart, would I have bled less often?
I thought superglue could mend a wound,
subdue a stubborn hair from blustery wind,
repair the butchered spines of history
textbooks students shredded for pleasure.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a diary’s
a million. Whether writing for work or leisure,
my professor says narrative is best compressed,
more interesting to note what’s not expressed.
5
It’s more interesting to note what’s not expressed,
at least explicitly. Which is why I haven’t revealed
why I couldn’t leave my room, suppressed
the ever-gnawing urge I had to end my life. I keel
to the ebb and flow. I try. Writing this, how dare
I not cling harder to my stupid youth,
the youth you clung to like a dancing chair,
a life raft ditched in shark-dense seas. To
think I almost drowned vacationing. Last week,
did the boy who cannonballed from cruise ship deck
to Bahamian sea, expect to be caught in God’s gold teeth,
Poseidon’s mighty triton? His mother rendered a wreck.
In old beach pics, I find myself when physically fit,
a boy, back when I thought love would save me, legit.
6
Boy, back when I thought love would save me, legit
save me, like Love had boxer’s gloves to pull
me from the dark, dense quicksand of dating apps, I admit
I captioned Instagram posts with poets’ quotes to fool
older men into thinking I was interesting. Unique.
You’d just started flirting, packed your bags
and fled from—Peter, was it? Did floorboard creaks
worry you as mirrors do me? What about the flags
which waver in everything but their insistence
to rid you from existence? My stomach rejects whiffs
of meat mice would’ve scavenged in your attic. Observance
to truth has immortalized you, dear Anne. As if
with each entry, you constructed a castle of not sand
but air, words built from a child’s white hand.
7
What your words built from a child’s white hand
illustrate the power of language, conviction.
Kitty, who you wrote as I do you, did you ever stand
a chance? Besides familial tiffs, the isolation
you transcribed most days, what it was to be
a child who yearned to know everything—
past want, past the paint and wainscoting, to see
the world— I understand you. Memorializing
each scant scrap of luck: shrunk shirts, spare
seconds to write, spoiled pantry potatoes, a bed,
a mother with whom to reckon. Destiny’s hardly fair.
Morning dances like a weed; I envy the dead.
I know we must see past the pain, must find a way—
it’s becoming more impossible each day.