to ann in three bottles 

 

dear ann, 

your husband held an island to my throat. i could see daylight through the silver hoops in both his ears. i wanted to tell you before the babies grasping at your ankles grew mouths that opened like his. i never wanted to tell you. i told you with a mangrove seed in my jaw. i wrote it in the sand bar off monos that hasn’t surfaced since our parents learned to bring the nets in. i whispered it through my ear as you gyrated your first child down into being. i threw all the evidence into the low tide so it would shatter on the reef. it bleached with the acropora. you never looked for it or found my absence amiss. you had already swallowed a pearl and married an eel and his hands fit yours as perfectly as a snow moon lights an equatorial headland. did you know that i was on the other side of the slipway with my palms full of tarpons’ eyes? were you collecting the shards of seafan from his hair? had you seen daylight through his silver as well? 

dear ann, 

your husband wrapped my head in grocery store cellophane. beside my left eye: a tiny valentine’s day teddy and a plastic white rose that smelled of his mouth. he pierced my ears with the foil wrapper of an 80% dark chocolate bar. the cocoa was grown on an estate people get married at nostalgically. do you know it? the light was as fluorescent as a meat aisle when he wrapped my head in plastic. it was a busy store: ironic as a bleach stain. you were scouring the aisles for glass noodles. you were in between the non-dairy milks. you read the label of a bottle of purple fabuloso. you pointed out the chemicals that cause cancer and the chemicals that cause birth defects. you asked me to pick out a ripe pineapple by pulling a leaf from its crown. you showed me how to smell the base of the fruit to check for sweetness. you said that its juice could substitute for sugar. 

dear ann, 

your husband ashed a spliff into my soft palate. it happened fast. your favourite song was playing from the radio of his blue truck. the radio was held together by shipping tape and the truck was held together by zip ties. we were waiting outside of the house of his friend who grew magic mushrooms in his second bedroom. there were beautiful potted plants lining the stairs. the men smoked and you smoked and i counted the spines on an aloe plant and held it together. you said you loved the terra cotta on the stairs. you said you could envision yourself living in a house like this with your husband and two children one day. did he ever talk to you about tile or clay? did he teach you how to roll spliffs as quick as flameouts in spit? i wanted to shout at you to wait with me in the stairwell. i wanted to whisper when he wasn’t around. i wanted to make any sound grey ash wouldn’t filter.

 

 

expedia is hiring travel writers

 

on the eleventh day of bombing 

we vacationed near the mangrove 

the constrictors were unimpressive 

and no nurse sharks cruised near the rusting dock 

we vacationed on the bones of a sugar refinery 

and in the cool shadow of a water mill 

we vacationed on the barrier islands 

where the cocktail bars were cadmium orange 

we sucked iced fruit punch through our teeth and watched as the runnels wound their brief courses to the bay 

we vacationed, bioluminescence streaked the delta we dragged our oars into the advertisement for nighttime canoeing read beauty not distress signal 

from balconies, we discussed the blue of the still-sparkling channel and spectra of pink glare while a sunset newscast ran on in another room 

we built chapels of verbena hotel soap, free q-tips 

and airplane safety manuals 

we vacationed where the limestone collapses into damp grottos like dugout galleries for photojournalist displays 

we heard of black rain so– well not so– but in addition, we vacationed nearer to the sun