Everywhere there are bicycles and sea urchins. Small children, soaked from swimming, wrap themselves around my legs and arms. Scuttling alongside me, they move wherever I move. Suckerfish on a white whale. The adults sit along the low sides of the dock beside the briny fragrance of the sea urchins, some of which are in buckets, some dumped on the dock into spiky hills of purple and red. These adults, whose fat cheeks are slicked with a glossy sheen, look at me and laugh. Toothless for the most part. Empty chambers of cracked urchins surround their feet. All of them fist sticks and screwdrivers except for two women who smoke.

When the woman from the white house approaches, the children unstick themselves from me and scatter. Without explanation, she ties a bracelet around my wrist. It is made with purple and red string, braided. The type of bracelet children give one another in friendship. She stands too close, the smell of her stagnant breath like the mud of low tide. Her fingernails are thick and yellow and rimmed with dirt and dried-up mucous.

They voted to send my husband away from the village, she tells me. She squints sidelong at the other adults.

I know, I say. You’ve told me already.

To read the rest of “Urchin,” order your copy of PRISM 51:2 here.