They found your thirteen-year-old cousin Ryan floating facedown
in the bathtub after a cocaine overdose, the bubbles rising like pearls
to the top. The police had to put yellow crime scene tape
in the front yard; they wrapped it twice around the trees
and the basketball post, even the fences, because all the neighbors
were crowding in too close.
You told me that for weeks afterward, all you could think about
was the thousands of dead octopuses washing up
on the beaches of Southern California, in droves and packs,
their tentacles spread out across the sand like lovers’ arms
surrounding one another.
Sooner or later, you said, everything we love will drown,
and, years later,
we’ll find it all rising to the surface.