Manatees I spent that blistering summer, unabridged, flattened like driftwood in the sharded-salt-sand, Anna Maria Island, Florida ‘08, coughing questions into my palms, eyes dusting over the tangled branches of Adam’s arms. I tried to make sense of the heat, solve it like an equation by pressing layer upon layer of pasty SPF-70 sunscreen across his back while the bulbous manatees somewhere subaqueous sunk their millstone molars into ragged clumps of tangy, sea-lawn. I wanted to watch them exist, plug my nose, scrape the bottom of the world with my rented scuba-gear as they swam concentric patterns around my miniscule, vegan body. Of course , I just remained, pallid, toes gutting the jagged, lethal ground before me, hallowing and hollowing a path to Adam’s out-stretched body. I sighed, perpetually; cradled his cranium with my pinched-flippers: he is all rough shell, all anger until you know him. Su...