Woman of The Sea

The woman across the street was a dowager,
Her husband had left her long ago on a voyage to the sea
Since then she has sat on her porch watching the waves rise and fall
Hoping for something other than gulls on the horizon.

When they had wed her dowry had been a boat
And it wasn’t that it hadn’t been sea worthy
For surely it was
But he hadn’t had the skill to maneuver the schooner
He was a man
Born not of the ocean but of the land.

After it happened she would hallucinate objects in the distance
Frantically calling and waving her arms
Imaginary men waved back then disappeared
Crying she would sink back into her arm chair
Positioned to face westward toward the coast.

Some said that they had been doomed from the start
Their miscegenation had been the root cause of all the bad luck
They created a half breed and to their peers it was the ultimate sin
To them it was something worth killing over
Not to say that the disappearance had anything to do with their lineage
But it should not be discounted as implausible comedy.


first published by Boho Coco
By: Dillon Mullenix