There are six thousand tons displaced above the Puget Sound, clones of ghost salmon buried in the waves, fins slicing through the tides. A ferry horn cuts the distance. The air is thick with salt and the fog circles above us like a wolf. Families block the roads while their children graze the roadside grass, collecting sticks for fires that will never stay lit. My daughter points to a ripple and says it’s a whale’s breath, but I know it’s the island exhaling what it can’t hold anymore. The island remembers what we don’t. It dreams in the language of tide pools and cedar roots, murmuring the names we’ve paved over. Long before the ferries, the people spoke to the fog as if it were kin. The water keeps its records, soft archives of fish in oil. They cut trees older than the churches. Said it was progress. Said it was God.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 28, Issue 4.
Dejah Griffin is a biracial Black poet and multidisciplinary artist living in Washington state. She earned her BA in Graphic Design from Flagler College in 2018 and is a second-year graduate student at Stetson University, pursuing an MFA in Poetry in the Expanded Field. Dejah’s creative practice spans poetry, spoken word, installations, performance, and photography.
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