The warmest night of nineteen— two women in the phosphorescent water, writing on each other with the plankton's glow. First—single syllables: once, you, breath, then one of them tries lavender and runs out of collarbone. That time of year, dawn arrives earlier every day. It arrives and arrives and arrives. One of those women shivers like a fortune teller married to a doctor on the eve of an epidemic. The tide will roll back out and, with its wash, any creature without something to hold onto.