THREADCOUNT

Taking To Water

1.

Two days before third grade I hear them arguing about the bus. I ride the bus, but mom says not no more. Stepdad says bad things are always happening.

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2.

What does a dead girl in the river have to do with me? She didn’t ride my bus or even go to my school.

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3.

The first day she drives me to school, I’m late. I cry. I’m too embarrassed to walk in. I know everyone will look at me, think I was too dumb to get here on time.

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4.

Frogs live near water or else they will die if their skin dries out.

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5.

In the lunchroom Stephanie splashes water on her face and pretends to be drowned at the table.

Britney says that’s not what it looks like.

Alisha says why are you making fun of a dead girl so Stephanie stops, wipes the water off her face and eats her french fries.

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6.

Why are people only sad about things that happen to them?

What about the girl? No one says her name.

What about the river? No one will name that either.

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7.

At dinner I stare at fish-sticks, wonder how her body got from a bus stop to the river. How many girls can this happen to? How many have skin that don’t take to water?

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8.

The common pond frog is ready to breed at only three years old.

Only:

1. without others or anything further

2. alone, solely

3. merely, just

4. as recently as

5. in the final outcome

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9.

I draw the outline of a girl. I draw it smooth and wet the skin. Her gills get her from the bus to the river alive. Fin spines make it hard to touch her there, especially if she’s moving and she is.

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10.

The school cancels our fieldtrip to the river, because even after two months it would be too easy to see her bloated body receiving kisses from flies, her skin a violence even in death, only she is probably still here. She must have just swam off.

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*.

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The Deer

1.

The doctor tells my brother there is no fixing his back, the flecked spine floats in fluid. He should expect a change in feature, in mood. There are pills for this, but he refuses, lets his back round into a shape of pain, starts walking on fours when being a civilian becomes less bearable.

The doctor hands pamphlets to our mother: How Deployment Stress Affects Families, PTSD and Me: True Stories from Veterans, Top Ten Things Your Combat Veteran Wants You to Know

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2.

Sooner than we expect, he leaves the house for the woods behind, finds an abandoned deer bed. He moans as he lowers himself, says he will never come inside again.

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3.

For three years we let him live in the woods without calling him in. The VA is backlogged and there is no one to make a home-visit for woods-dwellers anyway. The nurse says to call back when he comes inside, when he can be reached.

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4.

I try to taste the grass. I try fallen mulberries. I sleep outside for a month before I give up.

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5.

The shed shakes like an animal inside knocking a sheet of snow from the tin roof. My brother backs into the open gate, turns one foot at a time, banging his rack of antlers across the walls, scribbles language in his bone.

When I enter the gate, he kneels on one leg, the other auto-kneeling in its rot, hoof pointing at the moon beyond the roof. He huffs, sighs, tries to manage the hoof into place but all it can do is look up and pray.

He asks me to take it—do what you can with what’s left. So I leave, ask the snow what is best and trees answer with snowed silence, break bark into my mouth, urge me to swallow before morning comes.

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6.

Somewhere in this night is a moon. Some moon did this to him. Some moon opened me. Some moon cuts two pieces into four and into more and more until there is no light for brothers, for sisters to find their brothers. Somewhere the moon. Some sisters are a moon. Somewhere the brother.

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7.

I come back to my brother all saliva and ants, promise him the leg will be fine as I unhook it from his hip. Its slides neatly until catching at the upturned hoof like trying to slide the pant-leg over the boot.

I want to promise him this is all it will take, but we both know there is more:

another leg, his torso and twist of spine, two arms that dangle there to the side, a neck that could hold his head if it weren’t for the aching bodies piled atop each branch of antler: collections of bones with warm skin, fur so thick you could sink in.

I have seen him hunt before, seen him pull the skin back from other deer right outside this shed, seen the parasites collected in the muscle like rice. I know eventually he’ll ask me for the knife.