My Friends on the Lake

A deep poem about the vice of beauty. 

Inspired by a statue in Milwaukee made by internationally renowned artist Jaume Plensa.

And I lived there,

where my seagull floated through the sun and

perched above the lake when the clouds became

swirling orange and thrashing red, before turning to stiff steel.

He reminded me that I was alone.

They all did.

My breath came in clouds, swept away by

the flogging wind surging across the petrified, glassy mirror.

All of the reflection, save for me, was

beautiful, I tell you.

We were all neighbors—the same—for those moments,

but the (scrambled letters) (lies) empty inside my voice.

We sank together, and we died together.

That was why I was on the lake.

I could have written about it.

I could have formed either a raft or a cloud with my bare hands

and a pen

—the raft would have saved my life, the cloud would have given me meaning—

but instead, I heard the ice crack as it fingered my spine,

left me in wide silence.

And I do not hesitate to tell you that I screamed for a second

as I fell beneath the water.

But the sky remained the same, because

the wind had stolen my breath,

the seagull had killed my cloud,

and I had refused to build a raft.

“Call

Call me an

It’s beauty, It’s beauty in death:

we drown, my friends, we

are neighbors now.”