Poppy Seeds

The Merchant Marine’s Wife

10 t H e M e R C H A n t M A R I n e ’ s W I F e New Castle, Pennsylvania you wake up before the children and boarders and stand in the kitchen doorway in your nightgown. Beams of sunlight crack at the counters and break across the floor. your blood goes blackstrap, circles gleam yellow-violet beneath your eyes. At the counter you curve a paring knife around an orange, your thumb flared against the blade, the fruit’s weight rolling seasick in your palm. Bitter citrus and the linoleum walk of your feet. you lift the window. Hydrangeas crowd against the screen of aluminum mesh. Blackbirds snap like oil hitting a pan: a heated argument you heard once then forgot, a young bride moving across the empty architecture of an ocean. Where others had pulse you had rough twigs to protect your silence. no one knows this, and for that, you’ve been lucky. your husband comes and goes across the waters, his blood turned tide. What a match, you two, to start a stove with. What a quiet morning, an orange the only witness to the language you share with flowers. Immaculate atlas, how did you get here—so far from everything— for a man who picks at your bones while your breasts swell up with sea? ...