Ice thunked as I lowered the empty glass from my mouth, the raspy liquid snaking down my throat. Behind me Robert Johnson’s voice slithered out the cabin door singing of shrimp but not really about shrimp, both of us wallowing low, low, low in the wetlands. Both of us thrown out like troublesome trash.

The full moon was rising, casting a shine on the water, casting a spell on me. Cypress trees hulked in their super power, long gnarled fingers sunken into the briny bottom, waiting patiently, so patiently.

Wading into the water felt like entering a womb; warm, languid, swaddling. Your white dress ballooning like a ghostly Datura, your hair a raft of floating silk, my lips moaning your secret, tender name.

Charlotte Hamrick’s creative work has been published in numerous online and print journals including Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog, Emerge Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Reckon Review, The Rumpus, and New World Writing. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets.