I knew the stakes were biblical. I knew there was a God. Each day a preordainment, a new fate drawing close. I’d leave the house at night and walk the road, knowing I was watched. Breeze like hot breath. The trees making their signs. I believed in suffering then. Took up running just to feel my chest heave. We tend to ourselves, M said, only after everything else. The body, a tool, bent in one long direction. Sweeping the barn floor, again and again. Dangerous to believe you’re useful. Dangerous to believe you’re not. I’d kill anything she told me to. I cupped maggots in my hands. Loved her judgment. Trusted terror. The way things blinked before they died. Each moment, a fragile holding cell, all of us quivering inside.
Read on . . .
“Catfish,” a poem by Elyse Fenton