Fish I'm a child on the pier with my toes in the cold lake water. I can see only fog about ten feet or so out ahead. My feet bare on each step, I walked down from the grass to the rocks. My own voice is muffled and returns to me changed when I speak. When I speak, it is words from the fog in the hollows of sleep — Things I do not remember, surprising me as they emerge. I can’t tell just how empty and large the inside of me is — It’s enough, though, to swallow the pier and the lake and the fog. This is where my interior deep was first sounded and pierced. This is how I was caught. I still carry the hook in my mouth.
J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife and five children, his two parents, and a dog.
Amethyst Review 