The Sirens' Island

A small island in the middle of a still channel, jagged stones rising from white sands, figures that might be women perched on the rocks. The wind stops as you approach. The sails slacken. The water becomes glassy and the air tastes sweet and too heavy, like figs warmed past ripeness. From the rocks comes a voice that knows your name. The Sirens know everything: Troy and the men who died there, your wife at her loom, the great unanswerable questions. They sing the meaning of it all and you have to go to them. The white sands at the waterline are not sands. They are bones, of men, of birds, of things from the deep sea, bleached so clean they look like beach. Odysseus passes the island bound to his own mast, twisting until his wrists bleed, screaming at his crew to cut him loose. They do not. The island shrinks behind them. The cord does not loosen even after years.