By Josha Walker
The air smells of salt and something older,
like a prayer whispered to the tide
before anyone knew what gods were.
Palm shadows sway across the sand,
their shapes slow dancers in a room with no walls.
The horizon leaks gold into violet,
the way a wound sometimes bleeds into a bruise.
Somewhere, a gull cries—
not in hunger, but in warning.
The water shivers,
and paradise wears twilight like a shroud
stitched from every dream
that knew it could not last.
By Josha Walker
It hangs on the wall,
slightly crooked,
the wood pale from decades of sun
that never touched the sea inside it.
Within the glass,
the water is forever blue,
the sky forever unclouded—
a paradise so perfect
it feels dishonest.
I trace the frame’s edge with my thumb
and feel the splinters bite.
Even beauty, once trapped,
becomes a ghost.
In the silence,
I almost hear the waves begging
to be let out.
By Josha Walker
We picked the pears before they ripened,
just to feel their cool weight in our hands.
Your laughter fell through the branches
like sunlight that didn’t know where to land.
A cloud swelled over the ridge,
dark as a locked church,
and still we kept gathering,
believing the orchard would never end.
When the wind came, it came all at once—
the baskets overturned, the fruit scattered,
and you said nothing,
because we both knew the storm was always coming.