The Lummi Island Crossing Is Not What You Think

Ghosts say funny things when they are family–Ocean Vuong

The ferry to this island, you do not meet the crew.
No snacks, no restrooms, just ten minutes
of pure terror as your car is lashed to the prow
and the spray from Sound plashes your windshield.
You have never felt the thin of between so hard
and you open your driver window, sure that if you hit the drink
car glass is worse than in air: you might not break free.

You do not swim, and do not sink.

Chilled, second car off to dry land, you interleave
with other wheeled arrivals. An island of ghosts can only handle
so much traffic and so you turn, and turn. Wind brushes silence
back from your hair. You take the one road the island crafts
just for you, anti-clockwise, to find the greenest place
to stop and weep, where aftermath meets all your bright befores.
An edge has been passed over and you

—when you clasp the ghostly hand—

you cannot stop it from shaking.

Betsy Aoki

Betsy Aoki is a poet, short story writer and game producer. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction, 580 Split, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), and anthologized in Climbing Lightly Through Forests (a Ursula K. Le Guin tribute poetry anthology). In 2021 she won the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown.
Her debut poetry collection, Breakpoint, is a 2019 National Poetry Series Finalist, and was published in 2022 after winning the Patricia Bibby First Book Award. You can find out more at betsyaoki.com/breakpoint.

A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy

The Lummi Island Crossing Is Not What You Think

by Betsy Aoki in Uncanny Magazine Issue Fifty-One | 180 Words

Betsy Aoki