There is a grave we do not visit. I lie: we visit once. Family style, we head for land. Tails and fins break into feet and hands; our gills we hide beneath what hair we’ve fashioned from brown and greenish seaweed and kelp curls. We wash ashore, split apart, my father to unshutter our side-street house kept for just these kinds of excursions, my brother who knows where, I bet to plant his seed. My mother and I trek to the gravesite where we kick through gold summer grasses and listen to dead-edged maple leaves, the buzz of hot bugs rubbing legs together. The bugs start fires in their thin paper wings. The knoll goes up in flames. We kick and kick and stamp and stamp, holding closed our fragile mouths, hacking, our limbs gooey with disuse, useless, our achievement nothing but the smudging of ash against our tender arms. The smoke sears our eyes to tears. It’s here, says my mother, panting. It’s here, somewhere. This is it, it could be it, right here. By then our skins have begun to warp, to blister. She points to an unmarked marker, rubbing her eyes, head cocked. There? she croaks. In the distance, a fire bell clangs. Up the hill in a delicate development, squeaky-clean homeowners stand upon toothpick-stick decks, shading eyes and fanning noses, watching. They cluck children inside, behind glass doors, ticky-tacky walls.
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