We've all lived as beach house kingdoms--
On bare feet and cold floor boards
On sun humming like a harpsichord
or a heron or a watch face.
When I was seven
I had a watch that lit up glowworm green
and I felt like a spy.
I watched the military time blink
minutes into the obelisk of 1 a.m.
I was coiled on the percipience of a water bed 
with Aunt Joan who sprawled out
like a diner pancake from the morning 
yet to come. 
I held close her ruby-red teddy bear
to lit up it's face with the glow.
I'd learned that we all have birth stones.
I liked to make up legends for
myself that my birth stone was assigned wrong.
I have never felt like a ruby.
Maybe Onyx or Sapphire.
I told her that it was wrong--
and she told me she felt like that too sometimes
and that she was a ruby
but that she fell in love with pearls
and so she wore them around her neck.
She told me she fell in love with amethyst
before and so she wears it in earrings.
And that sometimes she could even love an onyx.
She told me that it's okay for us
because we could be accidental rubies together.
I woke her up six times that night
because I was convinced the lights
from the boats on the bay out
the window were emerald eyes, bobbing
like a Beatles tune.
Each time she put her hand on my forehead.
This was an uncomfortable and odd
gesture like holding the wings of a moth shut
or waking up in a beach house
and feeling like ghost in bare feet
or a spy with so many different
birth stones they forget what their real 
one is-- fade into onyx--
But know I'm sure were rubies there floating
on a water bed in Stone Harbor
waiting for sun to saunter in the window
with the herons and my mother's pancakes.