For all the kettle's whistling I cannot hear a thing. Too busy swimming in the gulf of having you a little and not at all. Last summer, a riptide carried you out to sea. Who could blame the ocean for wanting you? But I do wonder what happened out there, as the blue touched you in ways I never will, when your sweat and your tears and her rock-salts mingled. Did she turn you into something a little more like her?
No matter how I cup my hands, the water spills through.
Madeline Boles is a writer of poetry and prose living in Brooklyn, New York. Her short story "Cheese Day" will be published in Stand Magazine in 2026.