Pressure 

633 nautical miles, north by northwest of Anchorage, he died, his crabber capsized by 20-foot

sea swells, the wave crests a crowd of terror swamping his ice-encased ship sinking into a vortex

of undertow, bow broken, crosstree snapped, outriggers wailing in siren moans. A distress buoy

blinked red in the black night.

Eighteen hours later, 633 nautical miles, south by southeast of the Bering Strait, the missing ship

was reported when radar reckonings showed a void in the ocean when VHF wireless attempts to

rouse a response heard only static, the hiss of loss.

She learned from sea widows used to fear and foreboding, women who wore the sea's darkness

like a shroud. They soothed her in words she didn't hear. “It’s all right. It’s OK. The sea gives

to us, and sometimes it takes. We live the rhythm of the waves.” They comforted her in

utterances that groaned as ice floes clogging sea lanes. All she heard through the fog of their

commiserations was his words.

"Just this last run, babe. If we get a catch, that'll give us money for a down payment, maybe even

a truck. Then I'll stop. No more high sea's risks in high winds and bad times. We'll marry and

the skies will calm,” as he ran his fingers through his hair, coiled as a ship’s tangled lines.

Mascara tears running down her cheeks like exclamation points, she went to her bedroom

and saw it, her wedding dress, laid out, ready for him.

“Let it go, hon,” her dad said. “He’s gone, like yesterdays scratched off the calendar. But you

can still have a tomorrow. Let it go.”

She picked it up, toted the wedding dress heavy in cost, and hung it in the back corner of her

closet, the dress's white already turning leaden as grief.

fog shrouded waves

crest in cascading fear

the land awaits darkness