Dear Y.
You were five. I was six.
We were at the beach
with father and his friends.
He had rented us a tube
made of thick black rubber.
We could not carry it.
Together, we rolled it to the water.
Because I was older,
I climbed on it first.
I was a king.
You were my knight.
The ocean was our foe.
We pummeled and kicked the water.
You broke the waves
with the blade of your body
while I threw fistfuls of seaweed
into the wind
that blew them back.
My throat sore from yelling,
I climbed off the tube
to give you your turn
and held it
while you climbed on
with difficulty.
A tide had pulled us
away from land.
My feet did not touch anything.
I hung onto the tube.
The adults had become tiny dots.
The water suddenly felt cold.
As I began to cry,
you began crying.
You held my wrist and said,
“Don’t sink. Don’t die.”
And crying,
we reached the shores of America.