"Throwing Rocks" by C. Diaz

Image Credit: Mike Newbry, obtained and licensed through Unsplash

Throwing Rocks

It was a lake like this one, Grandpa,
where you taught me to cast a fishing line
that always came back barren.
The only fish I ever saw
were washed-up on an Omaha beach,
like all those cast-off lotto tickets of yours
beached and rotting on New York shores.

I always hated fishing
and those facsimile shores bored into the plains
to block waterflow and grow asphalt.
I preferred breaking the brown water with stones,
learning how big an opening I might make
into the murk managed by Army engineers;
but you wouldn’t let me.
Noise would drive away the prize:
tiny fish whose names I have forgotten.
Were they worth our silence?

Next time I see you, I’ll take you fishing
and I said Okay into the phone every time
until next time had passed us by,
because your heart collapsed
beneath eighty years of uncaught hopes, and
I’m going to throw rocks now, Grandpa.
I don’t want to catch any fish.

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C. Diaz (they/them) received their bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Their work delves into the unspeakable spaces between the people we are told to be and the people as whom we dream of living.