Cormorants
Abigail Boyle
I’ve been simmering the summer away
in a black dress
and sunglasses to match. There is
wisdom in my flesh I know not
how to reach. I watch
the cormorants plunge into the water
like divers
and retrieve flickering silver fish
in their dull beaks. I do not feel sympathy
for them. They deal
with their lot in life like me.
The aftermath,
retching pink guts on the docks,
slippery knives in slippery hands,
playing chance
again. Don’t look away. The
harbor is a drought of life. The tide is
low and the mud
reveals scuttling things not
too proud to hide. We
will snatch them up another day.
There is work, and there is work. I
have never found a place
so barren. You promised you
wouldn’t go through with it. I thought
that seething water
would remind your heart to beat,
that sand would grit through
your teeth with each breath, that
the sun would spark
life back into you like a flint
to kindling, and you would walk
with me on the beach
until we couldn’t any more. I said
I’d stop wearing black. You
knew I didn’t mean it then or now,
like how I didn’t mean
goodbye.
The fish keep swimming to the surface
to be gutted. For
a moment, they taste flight.