the hardest part of being alive
in any shared moment
as it happens
is that it has to mean something valuable
to everyone involved
in order to be trophied
on the highest shelf
of memory’s bronze case
and because you asked me about it in your letter
I am turning today
to our glass past yours and mine Colby
so I can watch it unroll again
like tinfoil
as if the tense were turning
even more shiny before me in the present
turning so the hot smoke of our young beginning
goes curling white and rising
from the red fist of a teenaged rose
and rising over time
into small-town fire
into blue California flame
on an open palm
rising tidal for all those decades
we found it so easy to laugh through
until it crashes finally
into the shallow dust of adult estrangement
into a compost of seaweed petals and ash
so there is our relationship Colby
yours and mine
perfectly contained
in its making and unmaking
behind a cube of glass
in the memory museum
and this is the exhibit I use
to remind myself
one more time
what it looks like
when a good friendship ends
and if I leave it right there
in that capsule
I can return again
I can watch the good years burn
and I don’t have to think about
how what we had
never definitively ended
or what the ending even means
or who is at fault for what
I can just leave us right there
bumbling up and down in the ocean
off Morro Bay on our surfboards
the sun about to burn out over the Pacific
and us agreeing without speaking
that the next wave
will be the day’s last
even though it never is
I can still see us studying
the shape of the coming ride
at sunset together
studying how each of us
might paddle toward the best position
or toward some woman
we both might want
I can accept
when there is nothing left to say
and no reason to swim for anything
against you anymore
and we are each of us alone
in our separate Floridas
or South Carolinas
without any waves
that maybe the good years
will go on burning in us both
or maybe nothing is burning
in either of us
and no one wins
by Ephraim Scott Sommers
A singer-songwriter, poet, and essayist, Ephraim Scott Sommers is a Type-1 Diabetic and the author of two books: Someone You Love Is Still Alive (2019) and The Night We Set the Dead Kid on Fire (2017). His third book, Diabetic Gumdrops, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in 2026. Currently, he lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and is an Associate Professor of English at Winthrop University. For more words and music, please visit www.ephraimscottsommers.com.
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