Orphan

Nocturnal (Horizon Line), 2010, by Teresita Fernández I’d come to help settle your mother’s affairs. On the last night, we ate where she worked all her life.Now that she’s gone, you said,I’ll never come back. Looking out over the dark, you saw a light in the distance, a boat crossing the bay, and told the story of the fisherman cursed to float adrift forever. You hadn’t thought of it since you were a child, and held your hand across the table to show me how it trembled. I didn’t understand until, alone, years later, wandering the city where I was born, I stood before a black wall, polished to shimmer, and it looked to me like the sea at night, hard and endless.