Lauren Frey

Rim

—On Cape Cod on New Year’s Eve

It’s a low tide near your mother’s house
on a blue morning. I am
on a rock on the jetty, not knowing the name
of the flowering seaweed I see in the shallows, swaying
like my breasts in the bath I drew
after you told me you loved me.
A duck alights on the water then drops down into a hunt
I cannot see. I know it can swim,
but I watch it come up twice, rippling
resurrection. I breathe. I was an island
when you came to sit on the rim,
dipped your whole hand under the steam-
less water. Looking up at you then,
could I have seen myself here, slipping
out of bed in your childhood home,
to sit here and compare us to flying things
that learned to swim to feed? This flat tissue
of seaweed, exposed now on the shore, will survive
walking shoes and the dry mouth
of winter. I know our future is here
to sabotage with my mouth
and maybe my shoes
and you are still up in the house
sleeping. I
close my eyes and think
about your closed eyes.
But later you will tell me you were
watching me from the window.

Lauren Frey's work has appeared in Textual Studies, Dream Pop Press, Full House Literary, and others. She earned an MA in English from Georgetown, where she was a Lannan Poetry Fellow. She lives in Portland, OR.