I Saw an Angel Near the Fence
To be fair, it was the end
of a long day and a large drink
we called Screaming Jesus
nothing more than watered-down
vodka, grape soda, and a stalk of rosemary.
We were dug in near a sandcastle
at Ormand Beach. My skin shrieked
against the heat, but all I heard were the angel's
murmurs between the eternal slosh
of loamy, gray-brown waves.
Eyes salty with dehydrated sea,
considering an impending trial
separation, my anonymous angel said,
"The keys to the kingdom are reserved
for those with an appetite for interpretation."
My husband had no idea
what it meant. Even I still remain
areligious, despite the evidence—
the seraphim's calligraphy across hot sand,
carved into my skeleton.
We shed ten layers of epidermis that week,
Ohio bodies exposed to a new slant of sunlight.
Hotel housekeeping kindly hoovered up
the sheets of our leftover skins.
My husband still jokes about it,
volumes of our DNA collected,
discarded vacuum bags of vacationers
rotting at the bottom of a Florida landfill,
how I sat with an angel whose graygolden halo
was a rusted-silver carabiner secured to a spike
driven into the hands of heaven.
"Commit to the bit," were the last words
I heard before the horizon turned orange.
Everything since is a hidden scripture, bewitched
in red and yellow, fragrant as pestled ginger.
A path of revised perspective, sifting sand
through sunblistered fingertips until the memory
of it settles—
like a beachside angel on the fence, manufacturing
meaning in her downtime for desolate humans.
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