(1.) Things I Never Knew
At sixteen, we found the photos, snow on sand, white and sparkly. My grandfather used to say that when snow touched the sand, everything turned blue. That fall when Sandy stormed the shore, my grandparents rested on their balcony, watching a lost refrigerator floating atop rough waves bang against their glass doors. Boardwalk fragments littered the bay view. Hours were spent lifting splintered boards, tangled in reeking seaweed, full of salty wetness. I pictured debris showered in blue snow, frostbit in color. Sandy being forgotten, left, covered. I longed to see snow shifting along sand, houses without roofs planted into the ground. Homes no longer filled with beings but belongings, abandoned, dusted.