Exactly How Deep Friendship Goes

let the ocean take it all she says,

her ankles deep in some inward river

emptying into the lowering tide

I know what is loosening there

rip currents and barnacles

shaving her to almost nothing

I can feel the pull myself—

though I stand back, safe

on this almost distant shore

something sinister

in the river’s fingers

keeps me rooted here in dry sand

as if stepping in after her—

the very reach of it

might loosen the same in me

expose shallow purposes

as thin and raw as I am

hardly the anchor or life vest needed

Ann Fisher lives in the foothills of the Green Mountains, though she is not the first, nor the last to call this land home. She is co-fiction editor for the Mud Season Review. Her work has appeared in ZigZagLitMag, South Shore Review, About Place Journal, and Samjoko Magazine, among others. Her honors include a Pushcart Nomination, winner of the PSOV 2022 Spooner Love Poem Contest, and the greatest honor of all— belonging to a community of writers and artists who never cease to inspire.