LISA LOW

On Pammie’s Birthday

You said I want to go to the beach
so we crammed into your fresh-bought bug
and shot past Crane Castle to get to
the Atlantic, parking in the still-jammed
lot and running laughing up the steep
slope to get to the boardwalk before dark;
spread like jam on the beach below,
a throng of bodies lingering still under
tilted yellow umbrella wheels; babies
with brick-colored pails shoveling foam
into the dissolving shore; we set our wings
for those waves, weaving past fellow
beachcombers: skinny shirtless old men
and beefy boys with artillery-sized arms;
the three of us, sisters, having dropped
from the same womb once, connected as if
by an invisible cord, scrambling barefoot,
breast deep in conversation, slapping up
and down the wet beach edge’s hardened shore,
a huddling, three-headed hydra, until
we stopped to watch the sun go down; it was
only then I noticed—planted side-by-side
on the bench opposite mine---how close you
two were, finishing off each other’s sentences;
finger-sifting each other’s hair; paired eyes
watching the skies with a bird love language
I will never know; how suddenly stung,
a stranger in your midst, the rope we shared
having dropped and neither of you noticing;
neither bending to pick it up.

Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Pank, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in many literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Phoebe, Pennsylvania English, American Journal of Poetry, Delmarva Review, and Cimarron Review.