like this:

we walked downstream

 

with water like cold breath

in our boots

 

and the salmon around us

throwing, fighting up

 

to drop their nets

of marbles, clementine,

 

go dead and wash down,

all flesh,

 

and we meet this way

so often—

 

forgetting physics

and improbabilities,

 

prayers for air

on the shallow rock—

 

that the bed’s been worn

down at the edges

 

and we’re always spilling over

to the banks.

Helen Spica, a native of the Midwest, writes poetry and short fiction. Her poems have been featured in publications including Midwestern Gothic, Pure Francis, Sundog Lit, and the Stylus of Boston College. Her work is also forthcoming in Split Rock Review and plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2013. She lives in Boston.