A Day in a Woman’s Life

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On the beach, five vouchers eat the tail of a corpse. They circle in unison, protecting its unreliable solitude. A long thread of meat connects their beaks together. On the shore, the woman stares, then imagines if the mermaid has died too. In her dream, the half-woman, half-fish, was careful with the predators, eating algae and enveloping the colorful fish. Dead beings are not pleasant, even if disguised as angels, the voice in the dark night said. The fisherman flips his arms in the air, throwing the carcass into ocean. The seagulls, disoriented, fly frightened. On her way home, she listens to Schubert and the melancholy of the piece makes her irk and cry hollow tears.

Poem published in the anthology The Collapsed Lexicon.