Everyone thought we were the perfect couple until suddenly we weren’t. And why? He wanted me to have lunch with his nephew. I wanted to watch the semi-finals of Wimbledon.

If only we’d paid attention that afternoon at the aquarium so many years ago.

transfixed
by the slow rhythms
of starfish
he calls them arms
I call them tentacles

—First published in Haibun Today (Volume 9, Number 4, December 2015) and reprinted in the author’s second book, Shades of Absence; appears here with her permission

Bio: Harriot West