Beach Glass

Once I was sharp.
Bottle-bright and cutting,
the kind of broken
that draws blood.

The ocean took me in.
Salt and sand and tumbling
for twenty years,
maybe forty.

I lost count
when I lost my edges.

Now children hunt for me
at low tide.

“Sea glass! Sea glass!”

They hold me to the light.

This green
that was once an old soda bottle,
this white that held milk,
this amber
from someone’s evening beer.

My surface has gone
gentle as breath,
frosted like winter windows.
No fingerprints remain.

The ocean has erased
everything but color.

In gift shops they sell
“beach glass.”
Fresh-broken,
tumbled in machines
for three days.

You can tell.

A woman fills her pocket
with pieces like me.
When she gets home
she lines us up
on the windowsill.

The old beachcomber knows.
We’re best when wet,
fresh from the waves.
Dry, we go pale.

Sometimes I recall being useful.
Someone’s lips
touching my rim.

The child asks her mother
why the ocean makes glass smooth.
The mother picks me up,
places me in that small palm.

“Feel that?” she says.
The child nods,
closes her fingers
around the clouded green,
warm now
from two hands holding.