By Tessa Permar

Salt, sand, moss, dewdrop webs, that collective cicada engine sound, thick tall sick-looking trees, crinkled fragile eyes, cutting themselves from tears with belittling jokes. Family men, the round bulge of their jaws jutting toward the next thing they have to do. A lot of witches. Young witches spinning indigo yarn, bearded ladies with new Spring lambs, glittering rich crones, all of them in linen blouses shaped like bat wings.

Kids with fruit punch rings around toothy wet mouths, screeching at the edge of hilarity and terror. The deer, always moving around us like a current. Squacks from live flocks and the ghosts of old birds.  Mulch-caked boots. Sand-caked boots.  Blood-caked boots.  Snow and pine-needle and splinter-caked boots.

And now and then, more than there used to be, suits.  An occasional tie.  Wampum jewelry on white skin leathered by the sun, beside sterling silver charms jangling on cream-colored freckled wrists.  New dogs on leashes walking down my road.  Different kinds of phone calls to the office now.  We don’t need jobs, we need houses. 

And a new generation.  Audra Lorde quoted on the school board.  Skinny kid on the sidewalk looking like a Brooklyn-born.  My coworker at the non-profit used to run denim distribution for Forever 21.  Her husband is in film.  Power Lesbians?  Amy Schumer running vigils for Black Lives Matter on Sundays over zoom?

I just figured it out.  If it were here, if it were real, if she were us and we were them, it would simply all be happening outside.  Everything here that is us, is outside.  That is why I don’t belong here either.  Maybe I can pronounce Chappaquiddick and Pohogonot but my life is lived indoors.  It’s not so much about birthplace or color or occupation. Once you become an outdoor person, that is when you become an islander.