Yearbook (8.2)

Hangouts and hang-ups, or how to make it make a move. One fun thing to do is walk across a bridge at around sunset, then turn around and walk back. There have been summers before, fennel shooting up everywhere, rocks and mullein and sleeping gulls, but not enough ever for me to say “There is a man up there jumping from rock to rock,” or something else adequate to the yellow month—naiads, bikini girls, globes of Alaskan glass, selkies, seaside huts for serious alkies . . . Like Mormon crickets or Jerusalem artichokes. Only more raddled stones advance from my mouth, trail of assistances and frilly knots, of which I’m tired and go to sleep all French and dimpled. The sense leaves. When I came home on Sunday night I thought it was someone breathing, and was creeped out till I connected that faint sound in the bedroom with the more distinct sprinkler sound in the living room.