Member-only story
Homecoming
Boreal forest, old as time. Bare feet grip stone giants
glaciers left behind when they made this place. Here
the river slows, stills, deepens. Its cerulean depths
betray no secrets; and yet
your own requiem and rebirth
wait there.
Jump in.
The water’s so clear it is less like swimming and
more like soaring on air that presses you
down and bears you up
suspended, bones thrumming, breath
surrendered to the shock of cold.
Turn your face to the current
eyes and mouth wide as
gills, and draw it in. All around you
king salmon are hovering, sun-pierced and
shape-shifting: now monstrous, now ghostly.
This is their birthplace, and the sanctuary
where they’ve come to die.
Study their graying jaws, their bloodless gills.
Let your own lungs quiet their clamor for air
and rest, caged in cold bone and clear membrane.
The kings are softly rotting. Their once-proud scales
fall away in strips, white flesh the current takes and
feeds to the earth.
In some places you can see their fragile…
