Feel the hooks pierce my flesh as the gentle trickle of the river soothes the pain which I try to deny, but it burrows into my synapses and looms over the roadmap of my brain. A roadmap where the diagram looks like the inside of a tornado while the acrid scent of my capture breaks through the desperation of seeing you. Cigarettes and depression turn my flesh grey in a white ash light of treacherous roads that lead to the sound of your voice, but I know I won’t be tossed back. It is upon this rickety bridge with its missing boards reminding me of days spent without you since they too are gaps seeking fulfillment that I took your picture and didn’t realize it was used as bait until it was in my hands. You were so cute in your brown sweater and orange cap and huge smile that it became my favorite captured moment of you but you always stuck it in the glove compartment when we rode in my car. Ever since you vanished, it remains there and I doubt I will ever get used to seeing the visor empty. After I lifted the picture, the first hooks pierced my skin. Instead of screaming in pain, I looked at the androgynous figure dressed in the dark green trench coat with the rip in the left breast that will never be repaired. This figure stood among barren trees with wet black branches that had tips like knives ready to grab any wayfaring stranger and somehow I knew if I approached the figure willingly, my blood would decorate the forest. It wanted a fight to make the suffering sweeter. But what was there for me to embrace anymore? My reason to live disappeared with your last shovelful of dirt and I longed to rot with you deep in the earth rather than caught by whatever this person was. There are no more smiles from when we gazed into each other’s eyes and you no longer gently run your index finger up the length of my face while I cup your chin in my firm but warm hand before I wake up and bitterly remember how empty the bed feels. Is the elusive fisherman a disguise for the cancer that took you? If so, in what form will it be when it breaks into my reality?
More from Issue #2
Walter by Kevin L. Kennel
The rattle of yellow leaves reminds me of clapping hands As the wind reddens my ears with embarrassment over those hollow hours Spent lost in a forest among low knife tipped branches.…
A Series Of Bridges by Ken L. Jones
The sea lion’s barks dissolved like hallucinations In the hushed tones of the precipitation Where frail birds seemed as other worldly visitors In the drip, drip, drip of thunderstorms and ocean mists…
Harsh Reality by Gary Beck
There is no forgiveness in nature, except among higher orders, which is closer to forgetting. There is no kindness in nature, except for higher orders, even that is fleeting. There is no…
Swan Song by Gary Beck
I see too many faces bitter and shriveled by the summer sun, smileless masks of drab routine battered by obligations humming survival’s song, the grating sound of a submerging city.