My horseshoe crab blood, Puff the Magic Dragon
And how to remember to say goodbye 
in broken conch crowns.

I am only sorry that I never said
goodbye-- a dragon deserves at
least that-- I know-- 
And it's a selfish thing to do
to get taller--
and we knew
each other more than scales--
piled soda tabs and pocked broken
shells enough to make our
dresser drawers into museums--
I've only every wanted to save
broken objects and I got old enough to
find the cracked people the shells
belonged to-- it's us-- it's me 
and you and the topsy shoulders 
of a conch-- the hollowed crown
that once housed the
princess of all the horseshoe crabs--
I used to live by the sea for one
week in July-- sung there
by a blue station wagon or a car radio
or the out of key Kumbaya I craved 
from my mother--
It's funny how she said she didn't sing--
because our mothers
are the only ones who can ever really
sing to us--
was it the year that we were ocean urchins
that we met dragons by the sea?
horseshoe crab siblings tossing each
other for luck-- I called you 
brother and you didn't know
what to call me--
when you're seven you can
make a week into a life time--
Leave only to 
spend Novembers wondering
how you could have lived so long
and so short 
in such a small body
of multitudes-- 
ask youself if you had grown
scales or if it was only
another dream pulled over
our heads by the passing of 
wave--how many times
you must have sung the same songs
until they were merely part of the
way you breathed and the harvest of 
cracked sand dollars-- we would
pretend we lived by the sea
all year round--
born crawling from the surf
on the back of a sung-wing dragon
who lumbered closer in the mist--
we never knew him well-- kissed him
behind willow tree-- passing him
back and forth
until we almost kissed each other 
only we were both horseshoe crabs--
and you were the dragon--
No one knew we were hidden or
that we had watched the waves to
learn how to kiss each other like
water meeting land meeting mosquitoes--
we small bodies of multitudes loving
dragons who we could barely see in the mist--
Oh but could he sing! He could
sing like a mother should
but quiet enough to sustain us
farther than a car radio-- melodious
he puffed clouds
into a night sky to veil the stars 
in their own cotton dress clipped
together by broken conch shells-- 
I hummed our beach a name
Hanolee Hanolee, A land called Hanolee-- 
tattooed my foot print into the
sand next to my mother-- wiped
mosquito bites from my wrists
like watches-- measured time
in the waves tossing and
turning under the eyes of another
impending cloud who kissed into
the night--November autumn-- when the
ground would start to blush every
morning and we couldn't see each
other as well in the mist -- take 
my blue horseshoe crab blood
from the mosquitoes-- paint our
names on the backs of the sand dollars
for our museum--
I still keep 
my knees prickly and purple blushed 
as ocean urchins-- 
hold me dragon boy like an unruly plum--
we found ourselves
tossed into an 
Autumn mist
yet again 
as the song always sings
itself out of tune from my mother
by the vigil of a nightlight 
and a prayer for the tattoos 
rubbed away by another belly
of a horseshoe crab--
We drove home in the blue station wagon
and we left you there
with the dressers of broken 
sea shells, the cotton dress
dangling next to the moon
and our blood lingered in the bellies
of mosquitoes falling victim
to our melancholy--
I'm old enough to know you're not magic--
or at least you're not more magic
than the multitudes I could contain
when I was seven--
oh what would it take to kiss
you again? The blink of a scale?
The tossing of a tide--
the hollowed out crown of a 
horseshoe crab mother
singing 
Puff the magic dragon 
lived by the sea-- and frolicked 
in the autumn mist in a land called
Hanolee--
I remembered to say goodbye
too late like we always do--
it's that our role as urchins? 
To forget and be reminded by
the autumn mist
the car radio
and November. 
That's what broken shells are 
for-- the approximations 
of dragon scales
and our feet tattooed next
to our mother's in the sand.