sand and water by ashley frerichs

​“Why don’t you visit me?
It’s been weeks since you last came.”
It had only been two days,
time warps for the dying.
 
“I saw Tony! He’s down the hall.”
Tony’s been dead fifteen years
but I don’t say that. 

In the end, memory becomes slippery, slimy,
impossible to hold.
Like water or fine white sand
cupped in both hands.

The water streams to the floor
in a gushing cascade.

Like the ones we used to
pull over to the side of the highway to drink from.
Glacier runoff, you’d say. Nothing fresher. 
And we’d climb back into the Lincoln,
damp from the mist and refreshed.

The sand tangles with the wind,
off on a grand adventure.

Like the time we visited the Mayan Ruins
though I didn’t make it far.
The heat, even under my sunhat
zapped my fair sensibilities
like a static-charged fingertip.

I wonder if the sand you lost,
that flew away with the wind,
ended up in a tourist’s shoe
in Mexico somewhere.

Or if the water you lost
gushed from the side of a mountain
to quench the thirst of
intrepid road trippers--
 
the ones we once were.