Leaving Vancouver

Leaving Vancouver 

At embarkation, 
she smelled the sickly sweet sweep— 
salt, tar, and ocean- 
woven through the Strait of Georgia, 
past the Radiance of the Sea, 
into the mouth of Vancouver, 
cascading through pine and spruce 
until it was slashed with Alaska-cold air.

She asked Russell, 
"What is that smell?" 
“Y’all know I can’t smell shit,” 
he said, aligning his suitcase to the gangplank- a private ritual of precision.

She worried the stink
a memory of something she hadn’t yet lived—
with nine days left on the cruise
would follow her, 
a shadow in every port: 
gray, cold, and rainy. 
Sun was promised only once- 
on the last day, 
a red-eye flight 
home to Chattanooga.