As the rain flows outside, our river runs, I am called back to Willapa Bay.
The sun, the clouds, the rain, vying for the Bay’s favor.
I see it all in a moment, through the window, single-paned, of the Oysterville Sea Farm
processing house, once a shed, now a shack.
Well loved by time and salt.
The inside showing as much as the outside.
A window, split into four, tells as much as the plaque.
Each filled with cloud, water, sea grass, still, and somehow moving.
I look out, to glimpse a frozen memory.
Taking pieces of itself, to rebuild, to maintain.
Will the Bay regrow, will it recede to reveal more of its history, its treasure, its ghosts.
Or will I learn as much as I am to know from this single pane.

Caitlin (they/she) is a Queer writer based out of Portland, OR. When not writing poetry they are holding hands with blades of grass or sitting with their dog Duke in the sand on the beaches of Wapato Island. While many of us do not belong to this colonized land, they are happy to make their home here and to work to build a community where all may be someday find liberation.