Burnt

There was a fire in your former home, it was on the news. 
On the ground floor, a Greek restaurant 
scorched and soaked, second and third storeys 
engulfed. The room where you once wrote, 
a black mouth open to the sea. 
I walked past the ruins on Easter Sunday, 
spooning mango gelato from a waffle cone, 
along with the other sun seekers 
after a record month of rain. Children zigzagged 
past in a daze of pleasure, old women 
shuffled in glittering saris, tourists held up 
cellphones to the mile-long train carting 
its load of coal. You brought me here, 
once, in my youth when nothing impressed me. 
The buildings on the beach too faded 
to charm, paint flaking, balconies 
rusting from salt air— 
I liked shiny and new, black leather, 
smoked glass, it was the 90’s. Grimaced 
as you crept up the side stairs, hand on rail, 
your careful old-man’s gait
rousing my disgust. You wanted to share 
this relic of your former life, the lair 
where you’d written your famous books— 
it was your ex-wife’s by then, of course. 
It still smells like home, you said 
when you unlocked the door. 
I wandered through modest rooms 
strewn with pillows, sticky with your past. 
Every surface smudged with sand, the air moist 
and personal, clogged with intimate history. 
Your old desk at the window overlooked 
the beach. Look at the wonderful view, you said— 
but it was a grey day, the tide far out 
on a stretch of wet beach where a few forlorn 
seabirds staggered. All of it was dumpy. 
I couldn’t wait to leave. Now it was burnt up, 
like so much else, and I was walking past 
in my middle age, partner at my side. 
I looked up at your room and then away, 
as if from the scene of an accident. Blown-out 
windows gaped open, blasted and gone. 
He and I walked along the pier, the warmth 
of the sun crowding our faces, our exposed necks. 
Later we would go for fish tacos and laugh 
at how he tried not to notice the teenage waitress, 
blond and blue-eyed, still baby-faced.