By Charlie Peck

The surf is strong today and the lifeguard hangs his red flag
above his throne. At the kiosk across the road, I buy five

bottles of the local and watch the sun glide through a sky
so pale it blends seamlessly into the sea below. I don’t feel

so down today, but looking at my toes in the sand, all I can think
is My God, even the beach is just millions of shells

ground to dust. They spawned, they grew, they washed
onto shore. I love my good friend Kelsey. She’s nothing

like me. She can stand on the patio, the rest of us bringing in
the paper plates, the bowl of macaroni salad, a mean wind

whipping the western sky into an angry pudding,
and she’ll tell us all she’s got a good feeling

about tonight. I know what it feels like to try and fail.
There was a time in Budapest with Kate, drunk, we found

the perfect bar floor, the music loud, the tables close.
For the whole week we were there,

we wandered the streets trying to find it again. My whole life
she’s felt like that, a room in my house I entered

in a dream and in daylight a solid wall. I want nothing
more than to not want this again. I want to wake

tomorrow and hear the surf crash against the stone
barrier. I want to eat pasta and not think of the salty sea,

schools of fish terror-stricken by us, our boats. How we stab
and stab until the net is full. I want to look at the night sky

and love this world, the sound of a car in the dense trees.
I promise a good coming-of-age story will make

me weep. How badly I want everyone to turn out okay.
Congrats, you bottle it up for thirty years and when it comes out

nothing stays dry. I haven’t. It’s been a source of issues,
this wounded dog on a leash, limping behind me.

Once on the coast, my sister and I climbed the lighthouse restaurant,
drank Hurricanes in the hot Gulf surf. When it was time to leave,

we both hadn’t expected the steep decline. Giggling the whole way
down, our laughter echoed in the stairwell. It is like this

I want to live the rest of my life—led into the dark by those
I love, no sound other than loud footsteps and our own persistent joy

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Charlie Peck is the author of World’s Largest Ball of Paint, winner of the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award. His poetry has appeared in Indiana Review, The Journal, Ninth Letter, and POETRY, among others. His second collection, Good Chip, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press (2027). He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.