My shoes
still smell like lake water,
humped like buried

rocks
by the front door.

On the boat we’d call
them shoal, those drowning
rocks:

ragged teeth

jawing weakly
underwater.

Now the lake has all gone
dry: forgotten

summers heaped like shells
along its edge. Broken

sunglasses
and bottles. Plastic
knives like thin flat
bones.

I walk for hours
to find
the inlet where
we swam, staining our fingers

with new berries
while the clouds

dissolved above us
like spent rain.

—
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley. She spends much of her time staring at the sky, which is almost incessantly beautiful.