Red Tree Review

[UNTITLED]

I am reading the paper in the bath. A woman bursts through the door. “They’re all dead,” she screams, pointing to an item in the paper: 17 Dead in Boating Disaster. She points to the far end of the tub. One of my son’s toy boats has capsized in the sudsy water. She couldn’t think…? She takes off her clothes, climbs into the tub. She caresses my face, my body. Suddenly, I’m conscious there could be survivors. We’d have to act quickly, they could be clinging to the sides of the boat, bobbing around on teeny-tiny life preservers. But the woman won’t get off me. “There’s still time,” I say. “It’s too late,” she says, drowning me in her kisses. “There is only us, and the storm of passion in the aftermath of tragedy.” I think of them drowning out there, struggling to stay afloat in the cold, choppy currents. The water in the tub rises as she sinks her weight down on me, above my mouth, my ears. The last thing I hear as my head goes under for the final time is the wind sighing over the waves.

JUSTIN HOLLIS has an MFA from Hofstra University and currently teaches language and literature at Palm Beach State College.  His work has appeared previously in the Querencia Press Quarterly Anthology, Action, Spectacle, Cholla Needles, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, GAS: Poetry, Art and Music, and The Chiron Review.