by Julie Esther Fisher

A ceremony with your three daughters
You held our ankles, dangled us
overboard, made us
kiss the sea
a pledge of loyalty
to our father

You sailed us
in mineral rich currents flowing
from a deep trench
Pickings abounded there, as did
your death lessons
Scale and gut the fish
chop off the dorsal fins
the pectorals
Run your knife beside
the spine
Feel the blade cutting through each rib

To sate your hunger we picked out
whisker bones one by one
whiskers that must once have belonged to cats
before the clever fish swallowed
their predators

You never knew
but we planned it, how to slip
your hook, escape
your knife
With our tears we made a salt pact
then leaned so hard over
the rail that
our hair reached for the waves

Julie Esther Fisher’s poetry and stories appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review New World Writing, Prime Number Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Other Voices, On the Seawall, Sky Island Journal, Radar Poetry, Fieldstone Review, and other places. Grand Prize Recipient of the 2022 Stories That Need to be Told Anthology, twice nominated for the Pushcart, she was raised in London and now on conserved land in Massachusetts. Visit her at julieestherfisher.com.