Teardrops, a simple ecology,  

reinvented in sociology class. 

11:43 and the documentary dead boy  

is pulled from the water at the beach. 

“Whose son?” a woman asked and is asking still. 

This is what a thousand strange women will ask, 

and a thousand mothers will be absent to count. 

Where do they all go? 

And why are children not treated better than socks lost in the wash?

Will you try to speak with the drowned, 

talk to another dead boy on another closed beach,  

a boy under a boat  

or at the bottom? 

No one seems to speak anymore, 

no one to call into the waves 

where sound carries.  

Will you be the one to sing a lullaby? 

To say goodbye? 

To swing a girl upside down by her feet 

until she spits out the rest of her water? 

I wonder if her nose burns with salt-water residue, 

if the boy’s lungs did too,  

if she will be reminded of him 

with every breath from here on out; 

the boy no less her brother than ours.  

My nose burns, and I wipe away 

ill-earned tears.