The Siren Call
The house was the last kubo by the mangroves,
green plastic chairs stacked by the door,
near a graveyard of boats where cats bred in the hull.
Someone said she lived there.
Or only came when the tide was low.
Someone said she was a prostitute.
I got confused by this.
The only prostitute I knew was Mary Magdalene.
She cried. They washed her feet. I thought that was the deal.
I saw her once.
I was ten. Maybe twelve.
Old enough to be looking
at things I didn’t understand.
She didn’t look at me.
Still, I remembered
as if she had.
It was low tide.
She sat on a stool
combing her hair with a fork.
Not a metaphor or a children’s story.
A dinner fork.
She looked the way animals do in dreams.
No malice. No welcome.
A stillness that watched back.
I thought she wasn’t beautiful.
That feels important.
Not what men wanted.
In the judgment of my youth,
I hadn’t learned yet what men call desire.
Later, a boy dove past the breakers.
Didn’t come back.
Lured by sirens, they said.
Years later: a city apartment with green chairs.
The faucet leaks in bursts.
I eat fish from a can,
shared with the cat.
Some nights
I hear singing through the walls,
like seafoam fizzing
against tide.
I don’t believe in sirens.
I just remember her
when I shouldn’t.
That’s all.
