Good Breakup
Already you've conflated this woman and me like any fiction writer would. Your pet peeve, that she continued sleeping while your boat drifted off around the skerry, sideways from the Greek island you were exploring to get away from our desolate country. While I peer at your steel boat in the picture, you ask whether I would help you. It depends. If she was angry at something you had done, wow, it's so understandable. A person who can stay angry at you for more than five minutes must love you. If I were that angry, maybe I would have flippered to your side and tried with all my might to slap the anchor back. On the other hand, if she'd jumped into the water, might it not have created a greater disaster?
During the time she dithered, you dived, stubbed your toe on a submerged rock, cursed through clenched teeth, until the cold numbed it. That your ex went to sleep in a storm powered you on. That she was a pelican, took you in her pink toothless bill, did that pull the anchor from the upwelling? Her past as a careful listener, though she's heard your stories too many times, lulled my anxiety that maybe your strong boat wouldn’t make it back to the shore in one piece.
You've created a cosy corner berth inside the ship's belly. The gentle waves soothe me back and forth, back and forth. While I listen to the gulls' shrieks, I hark back to a past that is all hers. It's sailing me to Corfu, where I've never been before, but where poppies and anemones spring up everywhere you walk, I mean once you venture off the gangplank. I'm staring at the picture of your steel boat. How do I get on it?
Jacqueline Schaalje (she/her) has published poetry and short fiction in the Massachusetts Review, The Comstock Review, and Pembroke Magazine, among others. She was awarded the 2022 Florida Review Editor's Prize and has been a finalist in a few other competitions. She lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.