Theresa Boyar (www.theresaboyar.com) is a seven-time Pushcart nominee whose poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in several journals. Her poem "Our Kitchen of Perpetual Failure" was awarded the Penny Jar Prize from Half Drunk Muse and her short story "Waxing Razal" was a 2007 BASS anthology nominee. She lives with her husband and two sons in Helena, Montana.
from Kitchen Witch
Island
Island It's getting hard to see
for all the shipwrecks.
Splintered boards, tangled masts, bearded
helmsmen—some still smiling, the promise
of perfection still skating their eyes despite
the illogical angles of their limbs.
In sunlight, I help my sisters carry
bleached bones across a dry beach.
We press them into the sand, simple.
I like, have always liked, the shift of cool
sand flooding my hands, this part
I've played since I can remember.
But things have changed.
Last time: a femur grating, knocking
against something equally hard below.
A hateful sound. Bone against bone.
I shoved until my elbows disappeared, then further
and further until my sisters had to pry me loose.
But it felt good.
And I've been thinking about
this blasted immortality
and how I'd trade it all
to feel the sand pour over
my ears as well, to
erase the sounds of birds,
the gulls, the waves which tear
our shore year by year but never quite
manage erosion.
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