Beach Death & Muzzling by S.C. Hawkins
Beach Death
Dew drops
and becomes ocean,
gifting us waves.
There are things
we don’t deserve.
like your hands
on my chest
or the sound
of the door
closing after you.
The stars are
more than alchemized
lust and fear,
as we lay
in grass,
our fingers
dancing through blades
toward the other.
There were people
nearby, there
was dew on
the grass
or just sweat
on my back.
Not from
the heat
or the blame
or from you.
Before the end
you told me
that you love
the beach more
than Earth, but
I never went
with you, except
at night
when the stars
went with us.
It was too
cold to stay.
I did that
on purpose, because
I cannot lay
in the sand
without it coating
my sorry skin
and without waiting
and wanting for
the waves, dragged
by the moon,
to take me
and wash
open our graves.
Muzzling
We muzzled my dog
after he ate twelve
of my socks, puked up
only eleven, just to feel
the knife and be closer
to me and maybe
to god.
Now I skip breakfast
and call that moderation.
But when I felt young, whenever
my parents left the house
with my sister and without me
I mashed up salted butter, brown
sugar and oats, then packed it
into my cheeks. I called that
communion for burgeoning
atheists.
But she didn’t eat
until she stopped
dancing. Until she lost
track of the placement
of her body. That was
when she got hungry,
so, she put my fingers
in her mouth and ripped
at the threads of my nails
and my skin to get closer
to herself and what was
underneath.
“‘Beach Death’ is a poem I very much found as I wrote it, in that, I wasn’t quite sure who exactly I was writing about when the words began. The images that came to me, and their associations in my life, ended up blurring the lines between several people in my life, overlapping the ways in which they were all both meaningful and harmful to me. I found this personal mystery compelling and felt that any further intricate work with the poem would destroy my relationship with it.”
“'Muzzling’ came at a time when I was uncomfortable with the vulnerability that sharing it would require, both through sharing my own thoughts and directly referencing the people in my life. I put it away in hopes of a time when that discomfort would be entirely gone.”
S.C. Hawkins is a writer from Manchester, NH. He graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from New England College. He is, crucially, never far from his dog or a tree.