It starts out as a story about a boy
who lost a tooth on the beach
and later drowned looking for it

then becomes an exchange
about treasures and bones,
what the lake swallows and spits back out,
what the lake keeps.

They've lost things, these women,
things they remember when they
finger stones
grey and smooth as kittens,
when they pocket pieces of driftwood bloated
with experiences they like to imagine.

This is where they find things.
When the story is no longer a story about a boy.
When the wind carries words about these women
who leave their husbands every year
to dip their toes in water too cold to swim in.

They see things here they can't see at home -
whole fish skeletons still intact,
ribs and tails sun-bleached and empty,
all that was mysterious now exposed.
There's pain in such starkness,
they decide, but they don't look away.

The lake speaks to them in whispers
and the long beach stretches
like an arm across a belly.
Somewhere it must end.  Somewhere
there must be a tooth inside a fat fish.
Somewhere there are men who love
these women,
but this is not their story.