Kinship

by gm

Jaime Forsythe

 

A bathtub filled with melted snow, a baby’s legs churning

studiously. Dusk highlights our dust, crumbs lodged in seams, fairy

door shimmering a little. The baby’s hands smell of watermelon, nutmeg,

raw sliced squash. Once I did things like a ride a girl’s crossbar at midnight.

I crouched in a clawfoot with a budding anthropologist, mapped the faucet face,

prelude to a walk of shame past a cemetery. But yesterday, first bike ride

in a year, my body mine, safety supplies lacking: lightless, helmet loose.

Animal prints and military bedtimes, pastel shaker eggs versus the warm, silent

chicken kind. Race around the swing set of a neglected public school, eucalyptus

rubbed into our chests, water passed back and forth, cold mouths. Churning

in my own underworld, words rotting in my gut, a foghorn cuts the drone

of the shower head. A sweet shadow drapes itself across the stairwell

while all the humans stay sleeping, head to toe.