The Pier
Sophia Ficarrotta • Poetry The fish in this water bite; they can’t just be thrown back in, because after they’re reeled and pulled out of the water, still dripping with the metal hook in their mouths, they grow legs— they chase you and pin you down. Their gills are sharp, and you imagined them soft, and this is no longer fun. She’s aware of this as she walks barefoot in forty-three-degree weather along the pier’s wooden railing, one foot in front of the other like a tightrope until she makes the dive, thinking not of the coldness of the water, but of the sharpness of teeth on flesh.
These Fish Bite •
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