Dear Girl

after Emily Berry’s ‘Dear Boy’

             please don’t disappear. Come back and lie
along the Charles with me. Let me tuck a blade of grass
             behind your ear as you watch clouds turn
into whispers. And yet, I’m not sure if you were ever real.
             Did you want to be? We can make something up.
Perhaps it was you I skimmed rocks with in Scotland?
             I think I remember you now, my dear girl.
You complained the waves were too choppy.
             We had such plans. We were stranded between sea and sky.
I tangled your legs in mine. We were a knot in the grains
             of the world.
Suddenly the salt became too much, remember?

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