Well

You took spent shotgun shells down from the shelf, filled them to the lip with blent black powder, hot-glued fuses into their mouths to shut them up. Even as a boy I knew their power. Like clockwork, each time the well clogged, you’d take one, spark it with your cigarette, toss the screaming charge into its closed throat. I imagined the ribbed plastic casing bursting at the middle in white-hot strobe. What surprised me was the absence of sound when one blew—just a plink and a gentle plume—like a wished-on penny. I think of you dying, your lungs filled with fluid, a cruel inversion to life on the fish farm. After the bypass, they put you on nitrates. Your worn-out jeans traded for gym shorts, boots for Velcro no-slips. I didn’t know you. We fished together anyway, and once I dragged up a largemouth, bigger than any before. Your hand on mine, we eased the blade into the metallic mesh of her ribcage. Out burst more blackness than I believed. I could only see fire lapping up the dieselslick iridescence—like the look of certain change—as it spilled into my palms. I know now it was shells, eggs ready to explode with life. When you saw me shaking, you said roe, though I could not imagine to what far shore, or with what sturdy boat.