Once on a Sandy Beach in Tyre

“Got poems on the soles of my shoes,
some lines on my forehead and a stanza full of clues
in one of my pockets,” he whispered in my ear.
We buried him next to his wife. That year
I turned eighteen and grew my first beard.

I came to you because you knew
my grandpa in his teens.
When drunk, he talked about you
—how you peeled tangerines.
He wrote about you, too,
wrote on tiny, torn pieces of paper,
hid them in the holster of the revolver
he sold in the early nineties, after
the end of the civil war.
He kept that worn, brown leather holster
in a worn, brown leather briefcase.
The key to the briefcase he kept in his pocket.

He wrote about the sea, the sweat, the heat,
and your tanned body spread
on a sandy beach in Tyre.
His heart was on fire.
He kissed your lips, tasted sand and salt,
time and tears,
under the sun that melted the ice in the ice bucket.
Then you imbibed rosé from the bottle.
It was now warm, but you drank every drop.
You smiled and asked him if he’d carry you home.

You drew a cedar in the sand;
the waves came and took it.
You drew a heart in the sand;
the waves came and took it.

You held each other until sunset.
You wanted to stay for a little longer.
You would have stayed forever.
But he had run out of cigarettes,
so you had to leave.

You said, “I will buy you beer on our way back.”
He said, “I will buy you a rose from that beggar boy.”

On his deathbed, he wrote to you.
That’s why I looked for you.
His words are in my pocket,
and this ring belonged to you.

Chris Khatschadourian has a BA in English Literature and works for an advertising agency. He writes in his spare time; when the muses don’t visit, he reads.