Trinkets

I had a dream last night about the way I used to love the things you gave me; tiny shards of glass with smiling faces, engorged strawberries in sugar coats, hands like palm fronds (or maybe the other way around). I remember dreaming of the jar of shells you collected on the beaches of Cancun. Your mother told me the story of how you crossed the thin skeletons of sea creatures like a tight-rope walker. You would spread your arms, embrace the wind and then dive like a pelican into the sand, fingering the creamy pinkness of the shell's shoulder. You brought hundreds of them home to me, in a jar filled with water. I remember saying (or dreaming), "Oh, Patrick!" but that wasn't your name.