In a blue cabin on the water,
the old woman lies across three cushioned seats,
her arms wrapped together like a hagfish
knotting itself together before ripping flesh from whalefall
She’s dreaming.
It starts with a smear of light across a midnight ocean
The island is a disc of smoking forests, a ripple
of white snakes
The woman spears fish from red mangroves with a
man she meets for the first time in this dream
who neither knows nor asks her name
his voice the sound of falling clamshells
He whispers the secrets of ancient coves in her ear
his hand on her throat
a half-moon of light in his mouth
as he teaches her how to write her wishes
into the burning trees.
When the woman wakes,
she does not feel like herself anymore.
She stares into the back of a stranger’s seat
and thinks of the man’s hands
How a body is nothing
but a thing to lose.
(Editors’ Note: “Ferry to the Island of Ghosts” is read by Matt Peters on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 55B.)
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© 2023 Angela Liu
