SeanWard.org

We fished by the lake of my old apartment, where
ducks played a vicious game of strategy, attacking
until drawn away from a nest, another would grab
an egg and sink it with her beak in the green water.

She pulled up two bass, tails flapping, mouths hooked
and dangling from the line. "Let's eat them," she said.
When the dull knife took their heads her mind changed.
I gutted, filleted, fried. She wouldn't bite.

A year later she ate handfuls of pills, sank like a broken egg
into blackness, retrieved by a line into her chest. She stayed
hooked for weeks fighting. I held her hand, spoke to her, read
to her, and when she awoke was banished from her room.

We spoke briefly at a conference table before her discharge,
but there has been silence since. Ducks, fish, eggs,
depths - that's all I know. And at this point, I doubt a line would
save me.