Sarah MacDonell
SWIMMING WITH S
it’s no coincidence
my favourite love stories are piecemealed
through perforated sheets
as a girl, emboldened by
Hedda Gabler,
I stroked the bureau
closer
to stone-pockets
punctuated by unfinished flooring
we eat our births
with spoons from
yellow linen
I think of Kate Chopin
& Zora Neale Hurston
to swim
to sink
that was my mother’s too
if they laugh off,
reviewed “unsatisfying ambiguity”
S could swim though
S could swim,
though when wading
with the one whose name
tightens around your wrists
who packs ice trays down esophagus
he’ll tell you about his neglectful mother,
his reclusion, his fumbling for keys
after coming home drunk
and she’ll feel these blister
and bloom inside her
in cruelty
she’ll hush the dawn,
nettles, and voicemails
from the shoreline, drowned
out by wind shouting,
it’s okay, the sheets are sewn, the sheets are sewn!
Sarah MacDonell writes, bakes and scuttles around Ottawa. She is the social media manager for Tree Reading Series and a contributing editor for Canthius. She performs and publishes in vestibules around town.