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NARRATIVE 3

Following that, stern-faced authorities suggested

you develop hobbies unlikely to attract

the attention of local apex predators.

You had to concede that made a lot of sense,

so you took to your mail-order

quarter-scale models of sunken cruise liners

with appropriate zeal. You imagined

what it must feel like to drown

as you bore down on the cheap plastic parts,

locking each one to the other,

smearing noxious glue when needed,

deciding the sea was awful,

nearly infinite as far as you were concerned.

Almost a week passed.

You made mustard sandwiches

and watched John Wayne films,

weeping when each was about to end

and you felt tired but good,

the way convalescence looks,

on-screen, with lap shawls in abundance

and guys in starched white scrubs

propelling your made-of-wood wheelchair

through fussy Victorian gardens.

You were too close to the ocean,

either one, and down the block

a goldfish pond bubbled like soda

in a neighbor's weed-twisted lawn.

Whenever you passed, whistling like a pressure cooker,

you could feel the water press

against your shaking ribs

with no real malice, just blank disregard;

whenever the blurred image

of your body moving over the green water

followed you back home,

you thought of the vague pleasures

of Kansas or Fifteenth Street,

or anywhere that hadn't turned so oppressive.

I'll write when I arrive, you said

to the unfortunate, to the curious,

who watched you wave from the ledge of the horizon.