“night surf”

In the spring we fostered a dog and taught her to not bite our hands.

We learned that she ran in the shape of little infinities before she peed on the ice plant (she would only pee on this ice plant overlooking the lifeguard tower on Main Beach beside an American flag kept half-mast for what feels now like months) when we learned this, we felt like we became her parents

We learned to surf on Thalia, we met a doctor in the water,

we talked about the novel she wanted to write

To catch a wave by streetlight and moonlight you don’t look for a wave you look for a blackness

that’s darker than everything else and

you wait for it to approach

and you turnaround

We’re looking for another dog, by the spring we hope for a dog that will be with us for years and

a dog that will lick the salt off our ankles a dog that will see

our children

I will tell my children about this what I learned between last spring

and this one, I hope I live to have children

I hope they learn to surf when they are young, when their muscles are like a foreign language:

I want them to know how to sense the water in darkness,

how to stand on it turn on it and carve

from it what they want