By Nick Fife
Between the ribs, a tangle knotted itself from cartilage and bone,
from wherever hurt, from whatever was relevant, from the smell that hissed
from the sink, from that time you woke up and found yourself
next to me, now a rib short. That part of you moved in me, angry, scared,
like the animals you name and love and look after,
like an ancestor whose name is no longer shared,
but abandoned, fading in the pages of a book on a shelf in a church
our family doesn’t go to anymore, like a book that you always mean to finish
before you feel shame about how much is left unread,
before you started feeling like a child, lost in the grocery store looking for something
between faceless giants that look down at you with either pity or hunger,
before either of us could tell the difference.
But ever since we left the garden, ever since we moved into this house, ever since
two began to feel like a crowd, ever since the skin of the fruit got caught
between my teeth, and you first felt the grass on your naked back and realized
that’s what you were and laughed at the thought, teeth stained, lips sticky—
ever since the first time, I look in the mirror. Remembering how soft you felt, I ask
if I am just as soft, or if I am made of sterner stuff, or if they found our bodies,
stripped of all else, if we would look identical, indiscernible,
except for the gap on one side of your ribcage,
except for the cacophony of mine.
Nick Fife is a Deaf Studies major at UVU. They feel too much too often, so they sometimes dance it out or try to put it all on paper. Nick has a particular fondness for science fiction and calico and gray tabby cats (though a bowl of Thai curry is always welcome).
