In estuary mouths where toes submerged

to settle, nipped by fish, above green floor,

With smallest motions, water-top disturbed

Where your small digits murder flat for miles,

All meant reflections scattered, quiets purged,

As slant as rippled slants will house your wiles:

Where feet were onetime used to break me wide,

One swing of ankles—eight clear scenes defiled,

My white on water traveling with your ride,

The ride you said you never meant to send,

Despite deceptive skills with more divide

Though light is too transparent to pretend

You did not move. Look!  Rainbow knows the score.

This is my nature—yes, my natural bend.

From sun or moon, be sure I’ll come ashore—

Regardless broke or rayed by tidal bore.

Heather Fowler is the author of the story collections Suspended Heart (Aqueous Books, 2010), People With Holes (Pink Narcissus Press, July 2012) and This Time, While We’re Awake (Aqueous Books, forthcoming Spring 2013). She received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. Her work has been published online and in print in the US, England, Australia, and India, and appeared in such venues as PANK, Night Train, storyglossia, Surreal South, JMWW, Prick of the Spindle, Short Story America, and others, as well as having been nominated for both the storySouth Million Writers Award and Sundress Publications' Best of the Net. Her poetry and fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is Poetry Editor at Corium Magazine and a Fiction Editor for the international refereed journal, Journal of Post-Colonial Cultures & Societies. Please visit her website at www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.