His hands smell of anemone and mushrooms

on a spring morning.

The sea is as flat as he is silent.

He’s a man who deals with silence and water, with

the weight of the stones in his pockets.

The tide has just begun to come back in, and he’s on the beach,

walking toward the town where I live alone, taking pictures of angles

and shadows that look like things they aren’t.

There are no waves at this time of day; there is only him.

I pretend that he is my father and I am his daughter.

I pretend that I have never been kissed.

I think about the way that he walks, and how he smells like my mother’s garden

in the summertime, before it was taken away from her by the wind.