There were men smoking squid on sticks halfway down the beach.  

It was one of those days when you think to yourself:

this could make a happy memory.

The sun was out at Salobreña. We were being kids again.

We smoked a spliff and chased each other

with seaweed in our hair.

We climbed the rocks and jumped into the sea,

though the reasons we climbed and jumped were complicated.

Memories must be carefully constructed, after all.

Look at the man rubbing sun-cream on the back of his wife’s arms,

holding her body the way you’d hold a crystal.

Look at the children playing,

the kite sketching figures of eight in the sky.

Everything else is best let go of: how we heard all day

the thud of the knife

hacking fish heads off in the chiringuito kitchen;

how someone cut their foot on the rocks

and bled all the way up the hill to the bus station.

I love five people approximately and none of them are here.