Summary

The grandfather unbelts his pants.

Even in summer, the tide goes out farther than expected.

You whip strands of bull kelp along your thighs.

Their seeded mucilage coating your thumbs.

In bed — your feet, her feet. The crane's winking wing.

From the kitchen, the city blades a watery light.

Of boiled marmalade, unyolked moon.

The father says pigs are happy when they roll around in mud.

He is talking to you and about you.

Whose closet catacombs a velvet-hipped hunting rifle.

Straight-backed as a cathedral of expired kisses.

Where the service starts late. The service runs long.

God gets stuck to the ceiling like a party balloon.

Many of the children offer their minds.

To angel feathers, invisible gems. A man slinging a soft voice.

For years, this is a well-kept secret.

A pattern of shorebird, shorebird, plunge.

Once, or later, someone claims to want the truth.

The truth is, you could have been a child.

The father arrows his finger toward a litter of wasps.

Each mottled mouth pulping the fold.

Don't worry, he is saying. I have a price in mind.

Summary

It was a day plain as milk. I microwaved apples. I washed my face. I imagined a conversation in an elevator. On a glass-bottomed pontoon. I was alive and alone. What was I thinking about? Expression, then disappointment. I listened to the sour gum leaves outside my window. They all sounded like a loss of precision. Or color. The cats were alive; they looked the same. I was thinking about the web in your hair. Your eyes clocking batwings in the dark. I mean turning toward me. I was thinking about peach air, green rain. Loon-howls after dark. I knew before long my short-term desires would become long-term patterns. I resisted the urge to bring this up in therapy again. It bothered me: what I could almost see in myself. My father's nose ripening. Commercial-grade ice webbing my chin. I was pretty sure love was only another way to be eaten. The way your hands winnowed smoke by the side of the lake. How gently you touched my arm, after. What we buried in those long, lost hours.

Ashley Varela (they/them) is a queer writer based in Seattle, Washington. They are currently an MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles.