Clair Dunlap
Salinity
mouth-breathing down lyndale avenue, i don’t think
my body has ever worked
for me—crooked from the get-go, bleeding
all over Fred Meyer into my tiny hands, trailing on the white tiles, the deli counter
without even one tissue to spare.
yes, i know how it is to wake up dead
looking, soaked through, the world entirely too bright
yes, i am familiar with red
and its associates rustbrown and clotblack.
haven't many of us mythologized our innate misfortune
only to wish what we remembered of ourselves
was not stumbling out of a van to vomit at the edge of the woods
but the woods themselves, and the way our body felt afterwards
standing in them.
if i wanted you to know me, i'd just tell you
that yes, the pacific ocean did crest over the rock i stood behind later that weekend
and it did cover all of me in its blackgreen water
and i cried, soaked through, nowhere on the beach or in the van even one towel
and how i saw the water go pearlwhite against the sky as it thrust straight through the air.
Mapping a Galaxy
there is also no light at the bottom of me and
this is just the way the body was intended. it's
not as if the organs buzz or glitter with work like galaxies: it is all
just wet flesh beating among the bones, flailing
vessels fluttering through limbs
which in turn do the work of housing the brain: most star-like meat of all. at
the end of the day, i wonder if anyone else is at least imagining the
neurons inside of them or also seeing them as they close their eyes to sleep. small stars in front
of dreams, blocking the view. a plumb line
spine and the absence of dysfunctional neurological events are every
girl’s dream. a single
nap in an emergency room could undo me, one
arm tubed to all those bags of medicine, disappearing the body out from under me. weightless, of
no-matter, spinning end-over-end toward the black hole of health. if it was up to us,
by which i mean me and the brain and the green of a childhood bedroom, there is
no way any memory would become so faded or twisted
as mine have by misunderstanding, by
which i mean myself misunderstanding the design
of the body i live within and also the opposite: but there is no other way for the body talk to me. and
so, now pain lays me down to sleep to read the dispatches
along the red, wet flesh behind my eyes, a stained glass window from
the mind to the eye and to the mind again to decipher. the
map of myself a loop back
to a hospital room or to a morning in spring or to a backyard plucking the caterpillars of
moss out from between the patio stones. the map of my
self is a simple thing, overwhelmed by a mind
set on its patterns. say
what i meant to be telling this whole time was the story of when i knew something was so
wrong that a doctor was needed to explain me. it was not a long
drive, but i always needed to stop. as
normal as ever, we pulled into the gas station. we're
going to skip to the details of the blood and some time later an office, anesthesia, pain. here,
it’s not as if everything
has been horrible. i watch the cardinals singing with my dog, i watch the lilacs bloom. is that enough to reassure you? a life or a body, although painful, can be alright.
Clair Dunlap grew up just outside Seattle, Washington, and she, her brain, and her body currently reside in the Midwest. She went to school for children's librarianship and will always recommend a picture book if you ask nicely. Her work has appeared in Booth, DEAR, Split Rock Review, The Hopper, and more. Find her @smallgourd.