In A Blue Station Wagon

The last one before the split
Before the break outs
Before un kept plaid collars

The first time I passed through North Dakota.
Our family went all the way to British Columbia that summer
In a blue station wagon

I dreamed through car windows for two months
Moving thoughts
Punctuated by green sentences and the run on of mom’s new Julie Cruise album.

Inhale
Lift my feet over train tracks
Catching luck in between my toes

I trick my mind to see monsters in the trees

It is a lonely trip
I cannot make friends with my siblings.
a sad thought
I buried under sand at the end tip our trips reach
On Vancouver island

My sister moves like birds
Dancing around the beach,
without a song,
without sounds.

She would always dance 20 paces away from me
Safe from my scowls and claws
And lion’s roar

Who are my ancestors,
I think back
Wondering if I am half vicious

I begin digging in search of these relatives,
That might lie inches below the sand
Their skin turned out,
Their claws grinding up to me

I find mostly stones and shards of glass
Green and brown
Sharp and fresh
Shattered bottles

Clare once told me about how glass is worn smooth over time by sand and ocean tides.
She had bought a kit for $29, to simulate the rolling effects of the salty water’s ways.
Clare gave me three pieces of smooth glass, that were the colour of churned rain clouds.
I keep them in a cloth pouch, hung from my mirror frame.

The broken bottles on the beach are still very sharp.

My sister moves like birds a safe twenty paces away.

Rhya Tamasauskas, 2005