Abigail Roberts
Underwater Sestina
I know you’re thinking about the time I broke my finger,
and how instead of taking me to the hospital, we sat on the carpet and pulled off my nail.
When it landed on the floor it blended in with the fish scales
that made up the pattern. We sat there so long that the scales stuck to our skin.
I can’t remember if we grew gills or sat there gasping and grabbing our necks,
but I do remember going to bed that night dreaming of the sea.
I know you’re thinking of that time because I can see
you’re trying to smooth your brow, and you’re twisting your left index finger.
You won’t meet my eyes even though it’s been years; if you keep craning your neck
you’ll probably pull something and I won’t take you to the hospital, I’ll dig my nails
into your hair and make you look at me. But I’ll hold on too hard and your skin
will scratch and your cry will make me want to scale
down the wall, through the window. Maybe a look, on a scale
of a crack in the sidewalk to an avalanche, could change the sea
levels, could bowl over homes, could make me stay here, where my skin
learned to breathe and I learned to ruin time with the snap of a finger
hitting the mantel over the fireplace. I’m sorry we couldn’t find the nail.
It’s only when we’re together that I realize we’re up to our necks
in that one moment that has lasted until now. I don’t know what’s next
but it has to be better than clearing throats and weighing words on unbalanced scales,
squinting the numbers to our expectations. If I could, I would nail
a sign to my forehead, Don’t Feed the Thoughts. Maybe then I could start to see
that your hands shake when you raise them to your brow and your finger
is already red and gnarled, and it’s not because of me that your skin
is pockmarked and scratched. Maybe it was never because of me, and our skin
never sprouted fins, and that blood didn’t stain your mantelpiece and your neck
bends like that because you don’t want to tell me that you don’t care about my finger.
And that’s why you didn’t take me to the hospital, why you didn’t scale
down the wall, through the window to my house that night, dive into that sea
and pull me out before I lost my breath. Why you didn’t look harder for the nail.
I could ask you now, but I’m thinking about my sign, and how small a nail
it would take to stick in my skull without ruining my skin.
I’ll never know what you’re thinking or what you thought because I won’t ask. I see
that you don’t want to talk and that’s fine. But I’m not sure what we’re doing here, necks
stretched and eyes trained elsewhere, as if a look, on a scale
of zephyr to cyclone could rip up trees, could destroy a town, could break my finger
and bend our necks back to that time. Sand would get stuck under our nails
because this time our skin would turn into those staccato scales.
Our fingers would web, our blood would turn cold. We would choke on seaweed.
Abigail Roberts has worked in politics, publishing, and the arts, mostly convincing people to listen to voices they’d otherwise scroll past. A Kenyon College graduate, she treats language like a tool, or maybe a magic trick: building worlds and clearing fog. She’s currently on a quest to get universal buy-in on an eternal tense. Follow her on Instagram @yappyabby for musings and complaints (but they’re funny complaints that really make you think—I promise).