Semelparity
by Charlotte Cutter
They would have died soon anyway;
we convince ourselves it doesn’t matter
if we catch them first. Sockeyes
swim upstream to spawn, rot, and return
to their birthplace, where freshwater
blights their bodies. Every being tumbles
through this current, carrying the ache
of its ancestors. The first
salmon run starts in June,
when each summer I recall
how I stood facing you
in the driveway, the sun
honeying the fragments
of the fading light, the two
feet of space between
us, lingering in the rearview
the whole drive home, when it happened:
a sudden determination to tread through
the last swell before the light could leave.
In the dark you drove so fast
I thought we were drowning or just lost
in the drips of forest you claimed to know
better than yourself, in the way you thought
you were headed, steady, sober, or
drunk like your friends who poured
drinks and laughed, said they liked me
better than the last one. The night shattered
into grenadine and glass, pooled over the dirt
floor. With a wreck so casual, so glorious,
could we only laugh? It's more humane
to bludgeon the sockeye with a nearby
rock until it bleeds, so it doesn’t suffer
any longer. Look, salmon always remember
how it works after they’re dead,
gasping metronomically, sputtering
through miles of river they’ll never
swim, as if they had the chance
to finish what they started.
Consider us lucky
to see something else dying.
Today I’m almost glad you left me
to trust this boundless daylight.
Charlotte Cutter is persistent but not running for president. She enjoys trying to accomplish futile goals like running a 5K without stopping. Aside from getting excited when a book she ordered comes in the mail, she is passionate about discovering new places when Americans aren't banned from other countries. She speaks French pretty well thanks to a year teaching French schoolchildren the difference between duck and dog, and she probably doesn't know what TV show you're talking about but can identify the French actor in the Chanel commercial.