44°14'32.0"N 68°17'57.7"W
by Gianna Valdez
Ten million lighthouses are carved into the wall of a memory: Hours and years on the drive to Maine and the roads between the green. Jagged edges and the rocks I collected from Mount Desert Island, wheels stopping on Seawall Road. Shot a flame into the dark and shot a gun in the woods and entered the lighthouse with the flies and their thousands of wings, tortured by the glass. The fields as we went down the road with the house at the end. A wooden ladder to the open attic where one misstep was death and one leap was flying. The bullet casing I kept. The bullet is lodged in the vena cava of this memory. Wounded by the flame, bleeding onto the page, this wordless film of time. The rare recollections of April twenty-sixteen are lovely and cold. Breathing in life with the lungs of the dead and tell me again: There is a road in Maine. On Mount Desert Island. Seawall Road. My uncle pulled the car over, stopped right in front of Seawall Pond. Here, he said, you stand between freshwater and saltwater. Remembering that line is how I found the exact spot, the sea salt and grass more alive than ever. Spiders in the rocks. I picked one up, white as sand, smooth edges, heavy in my hands. A thing that did not belong to me and a secret and a reminder of the place I can find on a map, despite the eight lifetimes that have passed. The compass burned in me by flashes of yesterday, breached by the tender hand of love (not yet able to bite and bruise) and so it is a compass, pointing to the past, to the ladder and the leap. Now remove the bullet and try again: The past as hands that carried me to Maine and laid me in the water by Seawall Road. It is night. I can smell the graves. I can taste death. Sea salt and grass. I watch from the waves and there is the flame. The ten million lighthouses, burning.