Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee
When the dinghy engine failed to start, I tied
a thousand figure eights and my fingers pruned.
The brackish waters were boozy with gasoline.
That night, a plastic moon above the main hatch
and the propane stink of a gimbaled stove, while
the bilge pump choked in the fiberglass hull. Slaps
enough from the green sea. The rest of the family
slept because they could in moldy bunks, black
confetti on white vinyl, the teak weathered gray.
I camped by the CB calling Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee,
9-1-8-0. The stars looked dry and too distant
to care. At daybreak I woke on the aft deck
soaked in dew, mildew creeping along the inside
of my back. I have smelled it inside my nose
for years. I have gotten so good at forgiving.
—Dara-Lyn Shrager, from Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee (Barrow Street, 2018); originally published in the 2016 edition of Southern Humanities Review