The weekend in Rehoboth Beach

they won a necklace as a penny prize

at a boardwalk arcade, a fragile plastic heart

that read “Best Friend” and snapped in half

to become two necklaces

that brought together formed a whole.

They split it on a windy day,

standing on the pier, the ocean heaving

beneath their feet:

Her half read, “Be / Fri.”

His half read, “St / End,”

like an abbreviation for Saint End.

They saw the same things,

and often they saw the same things differently,

so she might say, “It’s a beautiful sound

the trees are making,” whereas he would complain

of the noise of the wind.

They wore the halves

when one of them traveled. They wore them

for protection. They wore them

when things were bad

to remind themselves

they wouldn’t always be. “Be Fri,” she would say,

to catch his attention. “Saint End,” he’d reply,

before turning back to his book.

Sitting beside each other on the couch one night,

the split plastic resting

on their chests, they argued over

the heart’s sharp edge,

its shape, he said, “like something teeth

had bitten into,” though she was remembering

Rehoboth, leaving him sleeping

in the early morning, walking out alone,

turning at the long pier’s end

to look back

at their life: the lights

of porches at 5:00 AM,

the long jagged coastline

splitting the ocean.