THICKER THAN WATER

We visited Fort Pickens today
like we do every year.
It's your ritual for the son you never had,
bonding at war sites and fishing on the Gulf of Mexico.

I stand under a crumbling stone arch,
stare back through the gutted darkness.
Light vaults through the tunnel and spears
a small girl. She walks behind her father,
the gunshot patter of her footsteps echo
the cannon-thunder of his.
She struggles to keep up,
her face flushed and eager,
as he explains history.

I am less eager to please now -- or to learn.
Still, you want to stop at every bronze plaque,
detail the skirmishes, maneuvers,
intent on resurrecting old wounds,
digging at the scar tissue until the flesh bleeds again.
I'm ready to go now,
my period a day too soon.
Dark blood slicks the insides of my thighs.

We step from tunnels into light.
Waves crash against the thick,
barnacle-stained legs of the pier.
The water is clotted with jellyfish --
tentacles dangle, trail seaweed
like afterbirth.
Man-o-wars, they're called,
as though only men are defined
by the wars they fight.

Red tide, you explain,
caused by the cycles of the moon.
It's something I am only just discovering --
this monthly pull -- and something
you will never understand.
To you, the moon is nothing more
than a cold, dead body
reflecting the light of the sun.

I stare at the water and see myself,
five years old,
clutching your hand,
as the water lifted us, bobbing like pale rafts,
from the sand.
Waves tugged at our knees, thighs, hips,
until I bumped against a dead fish,
silver and bloated,
and scurried back to the water's edge.
You waded out deeper,
dove into the water,
parted the waves --

a scalpel of flesh --

while I stood on the beach,
waited, prayed,
until your face broke
with the crest of the next wave
and you opened eyes
blue as the summer sky.

I grip the railing of the pier,
cut my hand on a rusty fish-hook
embedded in the wood,
then extend my slim white palm to you
like a truce, a treaty
signed in blood.