Concerned that my fingertips are too withery
like figs, even when I’m not swimming. That I don’t drink enough water, but it’s because there’s an unknown slime gathering on the lid of my bottle that scares me too much to wash out. That my only friend is the clouds—not the streaked pink and sherberty ones when I don’t wake up early enough—but the leaden ones, indistinguishable from the aging sky. I’m not sure if my heart is hurting because of the cortisol surging through it, causing it to thump at what feels like three times its normal speed, or if my in-between-the-ribs muscle is making its existence known for the first time. If dentists are lying to me, are they jabbing the four-inch long numbing needle in my gums so I’ll pay them more? If I stopped going? Would my teeth chip away, grain of sand by grain of sand, until I’m left with gummy knobs?
That I’ll never train my toddler mind to stop knocking the blocks over before they amount to anything. That aspens have to teach us how to build community but we don’t know the language of their roots.
That when I’m in pain my face looks the way it feels. That when I was in third grade and hit in the face with a dodgeball and stared at my shoes for the rest of P.E., that my face was actually as shoved-in, red, and deformed as it felt.
That the voice in my head turns into a robed, hooded creature seeking my downfall. Deploying lead weights to the pit of my stomach. Feeding me thoughts of freefall that bring my shoulders itching up toward my ears and tighten my hip flexors, like my legs are longing for the fetal position.
Terrified that if I think too long about what happened the trapdoor would swing, that searching for truthful narratives would send me careening: I need you to say this makes sense, or at least tell me that my hair looks better than you thought it would, even with the wind blowing up through it, hoping that someone even remembers who I was before it went missing, and if this fall will ever end because maybe deadly impact is better than falling through and through.
That dogs have it better than I ever will—napping wherever they damn well please.
Learning of Preparations
And when the leaves go fresh green ochre
then red then shrivly-brown and cripsing
so the sign goes out.
It may be a subliminal shockwave rippling
through the earth. The signal to retract the lifeblood.
I think they feel a common ache pulsing through buried threads.
Not a time to stretch, collect, crane up to the light.
They get busy
Wicking chlorophyll from vast, filtering roots. Sipping deeply from the straws
of snap-twigs, through stable branches, broad trunk.
Percolating richness down to the low and crucial.
Bringing the warm aliveness, green chlorophyll and minerals down to the roots.
Preparing for the long dark.
The chill, the whipping winds,
Night dwarfing day
When the wanderer grows nervous with the silent screech of the owl.
They’re storing the pith, packing the fibers ‘till bursting
Serenely settling in for the near death
Telling us—you have to trust—with a buried but glinting knowing—that summer was enough.
Realizations on a Hong Kong Honeymoon
Homage to “A Kite for Michael and Christopher” by Seamus Heaney
We spend much of the 15 hour flight into Hong Kong talking about the children we may or may
not have
The conversation pulls my shoulder blades into a wincing embrace
A fist closes around my windpipe.
The doors slam shut, then the hot flood of obligation
I say we’re too young, with too many oceans to sail.
You talk to me with a hard analysis, a water-tight calculation of viable years, tightening time
Frames.
The 6 a.m. bus ride from the countryside rental house into the city is long and bumpy.
Across from us is a set of children. Tiny,
don’t look a day older than four. A boy and a girl in uniform.
Him—a dingy white polo with micro khakis and shining leather brogues. His hair is gelled into a
part crisp as a razorblade.
Her—two glistening braids, knee-highs, plaid skirt. They shove at each other. She throws pieces
of her soft yellow breakfast roll at him. He pulls her pigtails in retaliation.
Her HelloKitty backpack has an entire village of stuffed animals dangling off of it. He is playing
Candy Crush with the skill and precision of a day trader on Wall Street.
You squeeze my hand and smile.
I make the corners of my lips go up
as my stomach compresses into a tight lump and
drops.
Kate Davis lives ten minutes from her favorite hiking trails in Salt Lake City, close to where she grew up. She spends her mornings producing live radio, then heads to class to become the best writer she can. Somewhere in between, she spends time rock climbing, cooking, and reading.