Pike
M. Drew Williams
All I had were answers to questions nobody cared to ask.
Overnight, the rippling pond was flattened by the cold:
its surface was fitted with ice thin enough to peer through.
Crafted long ago from secondhand lumber, the snub dock
was unoccupied thanks to the biting weather, and so I sat
at its furthest end, hung my feet just above the tissue-thin ice.
How fitting it was just then: to rest beside something as fragile
as I felt I was. Pike still roved freely beneath the water.
Juking in and out of sparse sunlight, bodies like whetted shivs,
they were unaffected by the cold darkness. It suited them.
The answers in me couldn’t account for their indifference.
They'd survive at all costs, it seemed. We were nothing alike.