If there ain’t enough of me to go around, I’d rather be left alone.

The Careful and Quite Fashionable Reader may have noticed from Zelda’s previous posts that she is quite fond of the ocean. One might go so far as to say that Zelda is obsessed with it, since Zelda spends most of her free time on the shore and includes the ocean, sand, and/or pelicans in nearly every poem she writes. Now, Most Fashionable Reader, Zelda could lie to you. Zelda could lie and say that she is quite stunning on the shore with her plethora of Swimsuits of Fashion and her sunkissed brown hair blowing ever-so-seductively in the breeze. Zelda could lie to you, but she won’t.

Instead, Zelda will say that instead of being the Seductress of the Atlantic, Zelda is the Cutie Pie of the Atlantic, a sort of nouveau Gidget, with her pigtails and her thick bangs and her Stylishly Retro Swimsuits of Fashion. Zelda will say this, Fashionable Reader — but this, too, is a lie. Here is the Unfashionable Truth, Dear Reader: Zelda is an Utter Beach Disaster. Zelda can be seen from miles away as she approaches the shore, wobbling from the weight of her Beach Chair, her Beach Cooler, and her Beach Bag. Zelda always trips while she searches for the Perfect Spot on the sand, and sometimes Zelda falls. Zelda has great difficulties unfolding her Beach Chair. When Zelda finally settles down on the sand in her Beach Chair, nine times out of ten, she discovers that she has forgotten to shave a leg. When Zelda is not paying attention, dogs come up to her and pee on one of her legs — usually the shaved one. And, immediately after exiting the ocean after an ocean frolic, Zelda’s hair turns into this:

So you, Most Fashionable Reader, can imagine Zelda’s glee when she was delivered this Most Fabulous Piece of News from a Most Fashionable Friend of Fashion: a surfer finds Zelda sexy. (Clearly he has never seen Zelda, Utter Beach Disaster by Day, Wednesday Addams by Night, on the beach itself, but that’s beside the point.) O the joy! O the wonder! O the happy, happy day! Please try and understand, Reader of Fashion. This has been one of Zelda’s Secret Wishes for over two decades. And now, with just that tiny bit of information, Zelda feels that her life is quite close to complete. O happy day, Dear Reader! O happy day!

And here is a song to match Zelda’s mood! A song for all of us! Let’s all see that new horizon underneath that blazing sky! Can you hear the music playing? Can you see the banners flying?

Yes! The poem! Tonight, Zelda has taken Vivienne’s lead and performed line stretching on one of her favorite Guns ‘N Roses songs EVER: “Breakdown.”

Breakdown

I’ve come to know the cold. The beer
cans stack up against me like dominoes.

I am empty, an unmade bed, a form
without substance. A pelican nods itself

to sleep on a distant sandbar. An ice pick
being pulled from a freezer as the lone

taxi makes its way west. The night being
stuck to my back like a dying man’s fingers,

like a pair of hands struggling to regain sense.
The shape of you breaking me. The driftwood

bulkheads remain. I think of the crushed
ice in the corner of the cooler

as a hiding place, a place to rest
my heart on days like this when even the ocean

perspires. The cold shape of nothing
sifting through a swimsuit. There is beer,

there is nonalcoholic beer, and there is tequila.
The organ donors smirking their way

to the front of the line at the pier.
There is salt, and there is a wound. There are

cigarettes snuffed out by the tide. In time,
everything is pulled from the shore to the sea.

There is the scabbing over.
I think of it as home.