Potted orchids gifted at the launching ceremony. A recipient is absent. The captain has vanished beyond the horizon. Only the emergency exit light floats in the empty wheelhouse.

A stranded sailor finds a décolleté dress that lost her own flesh. Run away, she chants a hymn flashing in green for him. The needle on the compass points to the edge of the world.

Magnetic sand falls to the seabed with the lower energy of body heat. Eventually it will be a mass of iron as an insubstantial gravity. Departure is eternal stagnation. Orchids smiling naked.

…

hiromi suzuki is a poet, fiction writer, artist living in Tokyo. Her writing has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, RIC journal, Berfrois, Minor Literature[s] and various literary journals on-line.