written By
My first shark, still coming of age
and less, tail to face, than a yard,
made any other rite of passage for
ten-year-old me as unnecessary
as this brutal act itself. Flailing
on the boat’s deck with the seizure of
suffocation, its sandpaper skin
chaffed and scraped my leg red
as the embarrassments of boyhood then
suddenly gone. The coast looked
farther away than my own demise,
a death closer than I could believe.
But I did believe—inside the moment
between pulling the bloodied hook
and splashing the tortured beast
back into the foamed swirls of
waves—I could destroy anything
in the wake of my two new hands.
