No. 5

Winter 2004

Hotel. She is not accustomed to so much bedcover. How she kicks it all off and holds the pillow ferociously like a thick neck. And the armor is easy -- overstarched by the Spanish maids who give her chocolate mints. She presses her sweaty forehead onward. If she lets go, she will fall.

River. She is tiny -- wild copper hair, serious dark eyes, down-turned against the river's bend. Nods once after an hour of watching other children do it, then puffs out her pink bellybutton pulling her over and into it. Mouth unsets at the cold green brace of it eddying violent around her ankles.

Zoo. No surface memories now. She is there with her boyfriend. They just smoked a bowl in the car and her mother isn't there to remark: remember when you were little and . . . ? They throw dashboard hot nickels at the old gator. They collide silently with his neck and fall, dull plink into the cement pool. He opens one eye. Her mouth pressed to the wire mesh.

Home. Now on solid footing she boasts. She would do it again and again. The garden rug will not suddenly turn to slush. She doesn't have to hold her mother's burned thigh to keep from falling out of her body. Her favorite things have handles. She sleeps with her fingers curled smug around a souvenir. For a whole month her affections reside in a stuffed green reptile named Sherman.

Obsessions. The African Queen. Teeth falling out. Clocks. Submarines. Cacti. Rock Climbing. Vertigo. Stained Glass. Tin whistles. Strong men who speak slowly.

Alligator. She stays low. Ah-Ahs stutter from her gut as she slides one leg across the slick bumps. The current, not as lazy as it looks, grabs both. Adults going oh, no but laughing, waving bye. She digs her fingernails into the soft yellow rubber of the under-jaw, animal tipping slippery as she attempts to mount it, river swallowing her to the neck as the speedy gator pulls her little body from shore.

Copyright 2003, Karyna McGlynn

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.