As a child, I tested if it’s possible to drown
in a tablespoon of water, holding the spoon
over my mouth and nose. My mother went under
off the coast of Santa Catalina Island. The giant
Catalina goldfish stared like sinking buoys, useless.
Luckily resurfaced by her then boyfriend’s
outstretched arm, or she wouldn’t have
years later sewn the water safety badge
on my Girl Scout sash. I wouldn’t have been born
to turn the drowning bugs over in the creek
with my stick or grab my now husband
by the shoulder, saving him from plunging
to the river stabbed with fish like scissor
blades. Today I learned there is a river
in the sky. Invisible until the day it bursts
upon us like a tunnel aquarium. Storms
are getting stronger and the floating rivers
more leaden. They say it’s what will kill us
in the end. The spoon pressed so hard
it formed a suction. I smelled
the stinging tang of metal. That day I learned
my mother wouldn’t rip the spoon from my face,
that it was better to understand then
what could kill me than to later
be surprised. I went to meetings with the splash
of water embroidered on my chest, though
what I’d earned was not the lesson of water
but something else. That smell we think is metal
is actually the reaction the metal has with
our bodies. It is the smell of decomposing
iron atoms, of how our touching the world
kills the world, bit by bit. So when death comes
like a river of shimmering blue threads
to tie us off at the throat, it will come familiar
as the scent of our own blood.
This poem first appeared in Subnivean (2023).
—
Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of four collections of poetry: Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI. www.cynthiamariehoffman.com.
