KYRAN PITTMAN

Vertigo

Sometimes I think about not loving you
watching as if from a great height
the idea of it churning below
the way I used to lean out over the stern
of the ship that ferried us across the Gulf of St. Lawrence
summers when I was a girl.
When all fixed reference points had vanished
I’d watch the rudder spawn whirlpools in the seafoam
until I was nearly hypnotized and could see myself
stepping over and letting go just like that.
Knowing the line holding me back was only rail-thin
I would gasp and shiver
as if I really had plunged into ice water
and was now watching the ship going away
beyond recall, the name on her already inscrutable
the girl behind the rail turning her back on me
to face that other shore with you on it.

Country of the Dead
by Gary Simmons