Melissa Marczak
has lived on small and large islands in the Salish Sea, and in the Selkirk and Columbia Mountains, France and the Boreal Forest. She has studied textile arts, forestry and baking and pastry, and worked in all three fields. Her current writing explores personal geographies and the relationships between landscape and memory. Melissa lives on Vancouver Island in Canada with her son and three rabbits.
Thormonby
You slather grey clay
over your bodies
and lie in the sun
until it pales and puckers.
New skins taut and fissuring,
they turn slippery soft
as the clay melts off in the water.
An abandoned mineshaft yawns
at the cove. Bats startle
as you peer past torn earth
toward where light disappears.
Oars stir
sparks
of light
in the sea
as night falls.
Diving into dark water,
you are tubes of phosphorescent light
streaking
beneath the surface.
Luminescent
specks
cling to your skin.