It’s evening in the desert and we’re moving against the current
toward a building with a cheap buffet. Before we make it
to the door, you’re holding your breath, shutting your eyes
because my brother’s children won’t walk with you as grandkids
do; they move like a small school, their fins wriggling in unison
and play. They want me to swim with them, but I take your hand
paying then, as always, with the duty of my skin.
At breakfast, Stevie’s wife tells us you snuck off
twice to smoke and lit up again with the baby
in the car on the ride home. My brother straightens
from where he’s bent over the boy’s bowl, the cheerios
jumping from the cliff of his face in disbelief and falling
in waves over the turquoise flesh of Aquaman
on the plastic table cloth. Wiping the milk
and tamping down a rage, he tells Myriah
how when we were younger—the Lincoln
buoyant in the drag of the Nevada highway—
younger and netted together and trembling,
we’d attempt to roll the window down, gasp
against the crack of glass for the hot air,
the blue-grey smoke weaving itself around the necks
of our penny wishes. He tells her how you wailed
like a siren from the front and we were back
to breathing from our gills, and blind.
So dinner’s over and we’ve split my nephews
between us. You drop M. and the baby
at the door. I’m wading the five-year-old
through the first age of glaciers, past
the continental shift. Before I can hand
him off to the coral and a sandy bed,
you’ve pulled anchor, you’re rolling
out of the drive.
From the shore I signal to you
in the street. You stop. Don’t
pull to the curb. Don’t pull back
into the driveway. But sit there
transverse
like a line drawn with a straight edge
through blue and green and brown alike
with no regard for the topography
of the map, no attention to where
the sea is passable, and where,
if you’re lucky enough, it will call you
and hold you and pull you down
into the deep. You sit there,
angled, cutting the asphalt. You
crack the window as little as you can.
This is not you screaming and dragging me by my yellow shirt,
my head striking the floor, my arm burning against the carpet,
the seams yielding and rent, the Albatross on the front
screeching, me drowning in your voice. This is not you
chanting and profane, writing gibberish on a long yellow pad
and slapping the knife on the counter as a toll
to the front door and leaving into the red dusk.
You’re calm. Like I’m asking for directions
or the weather. Like you’ll see me
in the morning. Or you won’t
and it won’t matter.
My brother wept when I told him. Wept
because he knew how me raising him—
how the long bus rides to the dentist,
cavities filled with student loan money—
how the strain on a first and fragile love,
and choosing him— how my love was not
yours no matter what I gave, what I filled—
and I swore, never, never shall the sea fill me—
and the sea fills me. He wept because he loves me
and pulled me in and held me in the deep—
But you, sitting in the car, the last hazard
of the evening, you can’t see me through
the haze enough to ask me for a light. You don’t
reach across the passenger seat for my hand
my hair, or touch my face. Or ask me what it was
that brought me all this way. Tonight I am
the ebbing tide, and I obey the moon.
I walk away.

Sherre Vernon is an educator, a poet and a believer in the mystical power of words. Sherre has written two award-winning chapbooks: Green Ink Wings, her postmodern novella and The Name is Perilous, a 2008 poetry chapbook. Sherre’s work is heartbreaking, richly layered, lyrical and intelligent. She strives for linguistic efficiency by stepping outside of familiar phrases into a dynamic, shimmering grammar.