over and over, light sheathing them from above, two bodies with one single life to prove.

Know all the worst, and see the worst thing whole: one life neglected by you or betrayed somewhere beyond its own help or control, exposed and shivering and all afraid; walk in the streets, and see a crying soul that once this body and another made; look at it without sympathy or surprise; look at it with your sore, wide-open eyes.

You, meaning me. Because of my own dread of open gills, fish-scales, and the lithe shine over packed muscle when it’s dried and dead, the salmon and the fisherman combine remorselessly in my remorseful head to plead and punish; again and again they find me, and I find them, when we go looking and looking. There is nothing to know.

9