We travel by boat: too small to be ferry,
too big to be a baby whale
riding the blue.
I want to hug my mother's long, pale legs,
kiss her safe skin, but already I have sprouted: a light-
lusting bean. So as we ride each bump and crest away from her
wind swept line on the dock, I run my thumb
for comfort over the winding tick of the camera wheel—
my friend a kaleidoscope of motion in the small box
where the bow cuts the straight.
This island is for blackberries on the cusp
of ripening. Its cabin floors are for sock-slipping;
pancakes must always be fried in butter.
There are no cars here:
only one old truck and the paths our feet pound
in the grass, the burrs we pull and discard.
Each stream of urine we release
down wooded hillsides unlocks the perfume of mulch
and pine for the very first time—
or so I will remember.
At night, we swaddle our angles in dark raincoats,
glimmering like wet blubber, and scurry from the frame
house onto the windy bluff, across the bubbled stone,
through the hardy grasses, over the constellations
of sheep dung, all the way to the end where the sea
heaves histories against the cliff.
When the light tag game begins—searchlight a glowing cut
through the inky cool—on knees,
on bellies, we squirm as selkies
over the rough and bristle, across the squish of droppings,
brined by our own sweat,
our strings of muffled giggles.
We have whispered the story of capture
and escape so many times
we no longer need words: just moist taps
and foreheads pressed against the other
in the summer dark
as we slither towards the porch.
This we know:
the torch is danger;
the origin, our destination.
We practice how to home
without burning in the spotlight.
