Queen of the Gulls

You forgot to feed the gulls.

They found me, raw and resigned

on the mound of collapsed sand castles

and made me the queen of their vagrant colony.

They paid me in sand dollars.

We waged war across the beach,

and on nights of defeat, I fed them

stories of a thief who married the Atlantic.

Let’s pretend you never left

me bare and broken, stole years

of memories and lost them to the sea,

promising, “In death, we can finally part.”

I’ll forget you wanted this.

High tides returned your body,

pecked and bloated, and I realized

you always remembered to feed the gulls.