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With age mirage assuages what the youthful eye would have studied until identified— chicory? bluebird? debris? Today no nomenclature ruptures the composure of a chalk-blue haze pausing, even dawdling, now and then trembling over what I'm going to call fresh water.
Copyright © 2010 by Erica Funkhouser. Used with permission of the author.
The women who clean fish are all named Rose or Grace. They wake up close to the water, damp and dreamy beneath white sheets, thinking of white beaches. It is always humid where they work. Under plastic aprons, their breasts foam and bubble. They wear old clothes because the smell will never go. On the floor, chlorine. On the window, dry streams left by gulls. When tourists come to watch them working over belts of cod and hake, they don't look up. They stand above the gutter.
Last night the animals beneath her window crept out of hiding to comb the dirt from each other's fur. Rising to watch, she discovered the lilacs lit from below by ivory vinca.