Uncertainty With Fish Scales
- Uncertainty With Fish Scales
Uncertainty With Fish Scales
Maybe the boy sifting pebbles by the lakeshoremakes it back home with a guppy in each hand.
Maybe I don't call out his name& hear fish scales against a dull knife.
Maybe I don't call him mijo or child I'll never want& maybe I won't mean child I won't knowI want until it's too late.
Maybe I remember tragedy is the easy ending.
Maybe the search party finds him cold,unharmed in a cave saying he followed duendesin little green cloaks, heart-shaped
like the elephant ears growingin my gardennear the barren pond.
Maybe he tells his story with certaintythat the search party is looking for melike they looked for him.
Maybe the guppies don't gasp lipped O's on the stone god shore.Maybe they escape the boy's clumsy fingers& their story begins.
Doesn't every story start with a near miss?
Maybe the boy, the guppies, & I sink lower into the lake& the lake isn't a lake at all. Maybe it's always been the shorecovered in a trove of lapis lazuli fish scales.
I've said it before, but nothing unmothered ever leaveswithout a wake & ripplelike stones crossing the water. [End Page 29]
Laura Villareal earned her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her writing has appeared in AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships and fellowships from National Book Critics Circle, Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, Key West Literary Seminar, and The Highlights Foundation.
