The Ten Seconds Before Either Scylla or Charybdis Kills You

It’s like when you’re mowing the lawn and every time

you do it you have to push the mower in a different direction

so you don’t stunt the grass growth but instead of getting

time to establish a pattern you have to guess right

on your first shot at it, take a protractor to the ground

and pick a number and accept that there’s a 1/180

chance that you’ve picked right. You left for the cliffs

held by men from your hometown and two near strangers

that swapped in for men dying from scurvy

at one of the ports. You carried the two men

you jettisoned to a woman who swore

she’d squeeze oranges onto their cracked lips

and light incense and sing lullabies. But now a vitamin deficiency

doesn’t seem so back because when you get close

it’s like entering the Bermuda Triangle. You see them,

a rock and a hole in the water. You sneak closer

and the sun is always mysteriously cloaked in cloud

cover that might not have been there before. It starts

to rain. You and the other men all release each other

and grab ropes, stay your course, lay your protractor

on the deck and choose a way to go. You can never

know which one will take you until she does,

until you’re pulled in and crushed, either by Scylla’s arms

or by the weight of water. Either way, she grabs you.

There’s a chance, though, that you’re the unwitting protagonist

of an epic poem or the success story that will be told

to aspiring sailors with tattoos and a lucky streak forever

and you manage to sneak through. But when you get close

you can turn either way and see them, Scylla starting to creep out

while Charybdis just spins. It’s like they’re playing

invisible rock-paper-scissors. When you pass through

there’s a moment where you can meet their eyes,

see Scylla hovering above you like a turkey vulture

about to kill a runaway hen or Charybdis looking up

like a blue-ringed octopus, waiting for you to misstep.

You think about your family back home, and wonder

if this is the part that they left out of the story

they told you as a way to hype you up. You wonder

if you should have spent more time shooting at targets

in preparation for this moment. You realize that the rain

has soaked you through. And then you are selected.

Someone on the deck calls out a woman’s name.

the ten seconds before