Salmon
BY MIRA ROSENTHAL
1.
what I remember is a whiff of metallic knife blade just sharpened
and fish brine in fresh water
and inhale of dust kicked up from gravel
and heat-released vapor from broad leaves of weeds already grown taller
than me at sixteen in Alaska for the summer
what I remember is the swift motion
the man’s hand made to split open her belly for the eggs, the way he slid his palm in
and cradled a moment
the densely bundled tongues of roe, lifting each
tenderly from her body to keep them
packed so exactly in their gelatinous pattern
and the glistening that stilled my breath, that silenced his explanation in the face
of red complexity, the smell
2.
perhaps even then the ocean was already snowing particles of plastic
scientists would later call fauxfall
polyethylene mixed in with flecks of carcass, plant debris, fish feces, microbes
I imagine softly waving
the ships in, an atlas of swirl and current for the ocean master to read like a palm
piloting along the sea’s lifeline, navigating through the narrow passage between glacier and bay,
towing scrap barges as if waste
is a kind of fate and even then
the salmon were already numbered, their tail-slapping thrash against water with each jump
only the thrash was a sound you know is there but cannot hear, overcome as it was
by the drone of white water where we stood in the river
its momentum churning droplets to a milky substance
that muted the grand animal effort
to get back to the exact spot
where it all
began
to spawn
even then
we were only allowed one
3.
what I remember is the feel of my own desire like a tiny fish egg of potential life with a thin skin,
the afternoon rush
in the café diminishing to a few scattered patrons sipping lattes
I cleared some tables, scraped dregs from dirty plates, pursed lip of the sprayer sending a mist
onto my shirt, turning it see-through
what I remember is the writhing of blood in my cheeks when I caught
the cook’s eye
lingering on my breasts and grasped the trouble
of compliance
when I considered my one life and what I wanted
the thought fluttered like a sheet tossed up and slowly sinking back
to the mattress, while I kept changing
the beds each day as a maid at the local hotel, acrid smell of other people in their amorous tussle
lingering in certain rooms
while I wrestled the window
open
dusted and tucked in the hospital corners, aligning richer space and then returning
to the makeshift
campground where I slept, a blow-up mattress, tent set on a packing crate dragged from in back
of the drugstore up the grade
to improvise a platform for the night
I invited a man back—who he was, the man it was that I had chosen in the end
was unimportant, only the fact of the choice and our breath making droplets on the nylon mesh and my body
frayed from two jobs, still afraid but doing it anyway
to taste desire like a tiny fish egg on the tip of the tongue
when it popped
salty brine trickled down my throat
it tasted like blood
4.
sometimes when we’re curled into each other on the damp sheets after
reading each other like a pilot reads the seafloor
in the language of ripple and current, translating what’s submerged
by drawing on the page of surface tension
maps and signs for lust’s long study, that’s when I remember and return
to the limbs of my arms that summer
in the twilight of a tent set up by the bay, the mesh draped on its frame
salt permeating the labor
of our breathing, and inside these waves going in and out of my chest, I detect
the hidden scent of smoke and a campfire
with the pulsing glow of embers
and I hold my palms out to feel the warmth of my desiring and becoming
and the truth, what even then was imminent—
at some point, the ring of rocks, the window hung with cloth, this rumpled bed
will find the rising tide
climbing into them
