It must be as
the sea is,
past’s map: all lacunae
and sunken things, whatever
water-buffed
coastline or crabapple
blossom I let
be swallowed by other
recollections: leaves
low with wetness or
Maddie supine
on concrete.
And how my aunt’s
tide must have swelled!
I do not know
if at night
she regained her life,
somnambulating
through dune grass
and the Negev’s
flourishing wadis,
through lightning
bugs and a chorus
of monk parakeets,
the way fish
rise at dusk to
the surface, revealed
briefly to the fisherman
as if the surface had
fallen away.
Gabriel Fine is a writer from Colorado, currently based in Brooklyn. He has written for outlets including Electric Literature and The Los Angeles Review of Books and his poetry appears or is forthcoming in Image, Nashville Review, and Salamander. He works at PEN America.
