One gull circles
then a colony.
Screaming.
The Salton Sea leaves
scaled corpses
in bacterial blooms.
The psychic looked at the side of my fist.
Two marriages. Three children.
Only one survives
my choices. The women
I long for, their smooth bodies
left in the banks of memory.
As gamine girls we fed on roses
our skin sprouting freckles
like sand stuck to wet bodies
rime of salt lacing the edges.
Call the gulls back to the body
days of light stung with rain.
Here is the open palm that carries
the Alamo River to the Salton Sea.
The choices left where breath
could have been, green filming
the water’s surface
the eye clouded with air.
