Seaview, WA
I am getting over a cold when I decide to walk the beach.
My chest: cratered in. My breath: one long misunderstanding.
Still, I walk, all clouds, into what I think is delirious
healing. The blushing husks of crab shells shift in tire-marked
sand, seaweed whirling in wind like eels gulping
air. Three years ago, in this exact place, I was engaged.
I had thumbed my ring to see if anything would
tarnish it. Seawater and jellyfish slime sloshed
me awake. Yet, the ring: nothing but gem and preternatural
shine. He called and said you need to wire money now, right now, and so
I drove an hour to a seaside bank, to resign myself to a house, a mouth
I never wanted. That night, I swallowed part of my tooth and didn’t
know until morning. How does someone do such a thing?
White fang whittling my throat. A sign, a signal,
a flare? I devoured myself to divine something I already knew:
you need to leave him now, right now, though it would take another year,
though it would take another two years to undo
such sickly signatures. How long it takes to save the self
and this isn’t the first time, not even close. Shame bristles up
and through, familiar beachgrass. I cough into my hair, combing
old clam shells. Today, I walk and walk, this break from bed a bit too
much. In the near distance, I see the carcass of a whale.
The decomposed half, gulls nudging their wings in the fin and dads
with cameras, shooting. I don’t know what meaning to make here.
The tooth, the whale. I don’t stop to see. I just keep walking, breathing,
coming back to some shored living, inch by sea spit inch. And let it rest.
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023) and two books of poetry, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). She is an associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University.
Header photo by Opas Chotiphantawanon, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Jane Wong by Gritchelle Fallesgon.
