Poem by Aidan Forster

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SAUSALITO

We biked through the city. 
We crossed bodies of water
we did not know the names of.
My brother stood by the sea—
his brain a basin for water
from the Pacific.
He pointed to the bridge, 
said it wasn’t golden, wasn’t
a gate to anything more than air.
I felt round. I felt beautiful,
full of salt and air and water, 
a collection of fine points.
There was a gift shop with trinkets
and t-shirts and seawater
in little glass bottles. My brother
said he wanted the whole store
and my mother stared at the sea.
My father took a picture.
There was no name
for disease here, no name
for a cleft between brain halves.
This: a spot where we stood
and stared into the sea. A wave that folded
into itself, a place with a language
whose only word was blue. 
I wanted to slip into the sea
like a minnow. I wanted
to enter it like a bird,
scissor my way through its halls
of water and salt.
My beauty a hook.
My brother pointing, 
waving his hands like seabirds.
This place a heaven
with all the love knocked out. 

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