In Milford, CT, at World’s End

Lucy Ton That

For Sarah Rosner

By the Sound the topography changes, and the ocean
takes a high horizon in the middle of the sky.
We pass the stilted shoreline properties,
sand smeared green with seaweed.
Today, Scott is making a new map of the marsh.
He teaches me how to measure the sediment for age
by pulling discarded glass bottles
out of the earth
and recording their depth.
While he is in the garage, tracing
the paper with tiny felt-tip pens,
you and I are perched on the pale couch
to watch the October sun come in.
Forty years of silt heave themself ashore
and I begin to imagine the accumulation
of your life. We have only just met.
Neither of us realizes the darkness until
we cannot see the water anymore.

Lucy Ton That is a student at Yale University. This piece won the 2024-25 Francis Bergen Memorial Prize.

ABOUT THE ART | Mere by Mila Volpe, 2025. Mila Volpe is a student at Yale University.