"One life was cut off..."

One life was cut off. This must be a sequel.

Some characters changed to fit this new life.

July on the Cape. Two poodles. A beagle.

Your one-and-a-half year-old next to my five

year-old, playing. They both know the answers

to all of the questions I can’t seem to phrase.

I sit on the beach, conjugating past tenses,

and superimposing those nights on these days.

Your kitchen. The photo is blemished and grainy

(as are the memories now it elicits).

The water is calming. The coastline is waning.

The distant horizon becomes an ellipsis.

Our sleds on the Brattsevo hill on steel rails,

her kite soaring up on the breeze from the ocean.

Nothing had changed, but these minor details.

The past and the present – harmonic in motion.

One chasing the other. But evening descends.

The cold spreads itself. It's time to head back,

and we exit the school through the hole in the fence,

and instinctively take the familiar track.