Where I End

by Sophie White

I see the sea’s gleeful mutilation of the men as inevitable. The island is hostile; the seas murder the men and regurgitate them for us to see and know what’s coming for us all.

(Hope, I’ve come to learn, can be a noose. When we hope, we willingly, blithely, put our heads in a sadistic coil and wait to be hanged. I hoped for things when I was younger – pathetic things – and was always left swinging.)