I miss you, blue-haired boy, vanished again like the ripple of a skipped stone. I have never understood your leaving— a thing that must be born. How long must I remain underwater this time? Grief bubbles up as I remember how to breathe with gills. I swim as best I can to make the days seem shorter, relearn deep sleep to survive the ache of night. What is it about love that won’t let me quit, that won’t let me go?
I know how fishing works, this game of lines and casts, the baited hook that catches light, catches me as I bite again, no match for your allure, the pull of your reeling.
Ann Weil writes at her home on the corner of Stratford and Avon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and on a deck boat at Snipe’s Point Sandbar off Key West, Florida. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan and is a former special education teacher and professor. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in such venues as DMQ Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, 3Elements Review, and Whale Road Review. Her chapbook, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, debuted in April 2023 from Yellow Arrow Publishing.
