Buffalo
The shore is littered with rusted wire. Bones of a drowned metal deer, she thinks. A t-shirt, leggings, and white cotton socks are squished into the clear plastic bag hanging from her wrist. Her cellphone and wallet nestle in the fabrics.
Cinder blocks scrape her bare feet while she hops and shuffles toward the water’s edge. As the lake laps at her toes, she closes her eyes and breathes, “show me something if I should stop. Maybe a fox.”
However, before turning to check for glowing eyes, she pushes against the waves. First with her ankles, then shins, knees, thighs, hips, belly, chest, collarbone, and neck. She propels off the rock bed and glides onward. With each sucking breath, liquid that tastes like nickels and public pools sloshes against her teeth and tongue.
The radius of Tinder doesn’t bend for geopolitical or maritime borders. Lovers match across the lake and daydream of a bridge to Buffalo, a boat, or an island in the middle.
Waves had eaten the headland from which she’d left, a sharp horizon slicing forever taking its place. Her hands shoot forward and out, parting a path and pulling down.
Gulls pause overhead, contemplating the angular, living, salty flesh below, deciding she’s too big to dive and peck. Her lungs heave as she floats on her back to rest. A burning chest, from heartache or exhaustion, is uncomfortable, even agonizing. However, it’s stillness that stalks and hunts her slyly and it’s stillness that she leaves behind when she rolls back onto her belly.
Published in Pulse Magazine