We march into the early green,
twelve disciples before civil dawn
when dense fens are still black
and the gulf behind us teased
for more time with whitecaps,
blue sea stars, and devil rays.
An hour passes in the beginning,
our party wet from thick-shade
everglade mangroves to a mound
of prize shells rising high above us,
and our master, Peter, stops to ask
where’s the woman in white, Rosa?
Ofrenda? he asks the humid air
pregnant with fuming sandflies.
We held faces in reckless shrug
until we see that she was gone.
None of us offer to know her form
or when she slipped away from us.
We take the hill to claim Big Pine Key,
crushing conch and sand dollar
along the bleached pass and glimpse the tops
of worlds we’d once held, eyes peering
over canopy back the way we’d come
to the sparkling gulf now mute as the Portuguese
man-of-war; we cup flushed ears for calls
of her amid magnificent frigatebirds
and night-heron barks.
A man named Simon, in black mariner’s cap,
says Rosa was an eye doctor but can’t offer why,
and wants to trek back to find reasons for her
to be, to say her name out loud anew
in damnable tones. We descend,
leave the chalky hill we’d staked behind in hush,
like English pirates burning St. Augustine,
planting another black flag crown
in fiery blood and bald cypress charcoal.
Rosa is nowhere, no traces to find her sound.
Our shepherd weeps, we stare downwind of Peter.
Simon points some stretch away to shadows
moving over something with a long nose
in the Stygian mud; we dare steps nearer
to the darkening matter.
It whirls back toward the rushing bight.
We bleed from scratches; prickly-pear thorns
rip our socks to beckon hungry palm rats.
We lead each other out to the littered beach.
On the sugar sand, we see Rosa beside the gulf.
Her hair endless and onshore floating ivory,
her clothes now scarlet drip with muck
as the tide nuzzled her heels;
our fellows tell us not to involve her
in the affairs of the hunt
for all the other renegade crusaders in white.
She lay face up, like a lioness sleeping,
surf clams resting over raven eyes,
her long tail, fishtail braids of spun glass.
© 2024 Mikal Wix
Mikal Wix is a queer writer from Miami, Florida, where many things go to unravel but end up in knots. Their writing has appeared in journals, such as North American Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Moss Puppy, Door = Jar, Portland Review, and Gone Lawn. They serve as poetry editor for West Trade Review. All published works here: https://linktr.ee/mikalwix