You were an animal several miles long.
We couldn’t sense your beginning or your end.
To be honest, we were young
and afraid we wouldn’t find another escape
from such an endless amount of water.
So we brought out our things: our pots
and pans, our desires and memories
of desires, our flags and grandmother’s
prayers. We made a fire on your long back
and danced near your nostrils.
I have many excuses for us, but the truth is,
it was enough to pretend; to imagine that
your body really was an island we could settle on
and wait out our troubles; that your bones
didn’t have to suddenly tremble and plunge one night
into the water we were so afraid of.
It was enough just to imagine a home with you.
But don’t think, never think we didn’t know
you were an animal with a mouth when we slept.
We were dreaming but we weren’t really young anymore.
On the morning you submerged—when our pots and pans
and desires and memories were swallowed up
by a dark throat of water—we didn’t cry this time.
Those things can be replaced.
All things can be replaced except youth.
The first time you see an escape, an island drawing close
and you don’t know it’s an animal,
it feels like the end of your story when you’re wrong.
Now we’re older and less adventurous
but we know that a story doesn’t end
until a story stops moving.
| Angel Leal is a Latinx, trans/nonbinary writer whose poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, Heartlines Spec, Solarpunk Magazine, and elsewhere. They’ve been nominated for the Utopia Award, the Pushcart Prize, and are a co-admin of CALAMITOUS, a queer sci-fi and fantasy writing group. You can find them lost at sea at angel-leal.com or floating around Twitter @orbiting_angel. |  |