Her Cry

sounds like a Seagull's squawk

so I call her Evabird and tell her stories about the ocean: all salt air taffy love; how you can walk a hundred miles with the sand between your toes and never think to look back; I tell her about balloons that come unloosed and stars that lay belly-down; I tell her about the time I got stung by fishes made of jelly and the day her Uncle Joe buried me in the sand and made a mermaid of me; I tell her of meteor showers and summer thunder and houses that sit so close to the edge of the earth it seems that any second they could fall into the sky. Then I kiss her head, and Evabird, I say, mama's here. Don't cry. All the ocean is tears...we don't need any here.