Low Tide

The vacuum is screaming, a high, plastic wail

as I drag it across the salt-white floor.

It hits a patch of something heavier than ice—

a sudden, sharp rattling deep in its throat.

I knelt down to check the cuff of my pants

and found a secret pocket of summer inside.

Not the soft, white powder of a postcard beach,

but gray, jagged grit that gets under a nail.

It’s coarse and it’s cold, smelling of nothing,

just tiny stones that survived the October rain.

The machine gulps them down with a frantic clatter,

erasing the last of the heat from the room,

leaving only the smell of dust and the motor.