I’ve never been one for fishing really,
but this was a special occasion.
We went out dressed in confidence
and a party atmosphere
which felt like an intrusion in the still water there.
We hauled our hopes over the side of the boat
on the end of lines we’d written in our sleep
wound about poles we wielded like pens
because writing was the closest experience we had
to angling for truth in the middle of nowhere.
We thought we were in familiar territory
because we never expected to catch anything
just cast ideas into the water to see if they floated
but three hours in and we started to get a tug.
It was the first sign that anything was alive in that lake
that wasn’t us
and we instantly set about panicking.
None of us had done this before, not with our arms
and our abdomens
so we struggled wildly with the kind of passion
only novices can bring
and somehow, between us,
managed to haul something new from the water.
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