Distance from the Salt

The drywall was beginning to hum

so I drove until the roads ended

at a chain-link fence and the smell of rot.

The sky is too big for this afternoon.

A gull drags a Burger King wrapper

through the foam, its wings

heavy with grease and a wind

that keeps shoving it back toward the asphalt.

The horizon is a flat, gray lie.

Under my boot, a Styrofoam lid

is half-choked by the sand,

cracked and white as a tooth.

I’m not going in.

The water is just a place to drown.