The Cannery Whistle

She kept the letter from the college folded in quarters in the back of her phone case, where it curved to the shape of her hand.

Driving lessons happened in the empty lot behind the church, in her uncle’s truck, which had a clutch like a bad argument and a smell of gasoline and oranges.

In August the fog came in so thick the gulls walked. June walked with them, down to the breakwater, and sat with her feet over the edge of the known world.

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Nobody in Port Halley said goodbye. They said see you, as if the sea might make liars of them otherwise.

The cannery whistle blew at six every morning for fifty years, and the first morning it didn’t, half the town woke up anyway and lay there listening to the absence.

June’s mother kept the radio on in every room, as if the house needed company.