after Allistair B. Fraser’s ‘Bad Science Pages’
1.
Air is a sponge.
Caught in it,
I am a field, flooded.
(They’ll tell you
your body
consists of mostly
water. Drown
is the first
verb we should
know. But it isn’t.)
Let go of it,
I am a tooth, a hand-
ful of teeth,
being mistaken
for seeds.
Give it time.
If you want.
There’s always two
sides to every
story.
Even the facts.
2.
But, air does have
a holding capacity for
water vapor.
I bite my tongue in my sleep.
You think I’m choking.
It’s hard to talk
when I first wake up.
Have you ever caught a fish
with your hands?
The gills, curtains, opening & not-
opening.
Drop it.
Drop it.
Drop it.
Breathe.
Light seizes every opportunity.
I was going to say knife
here. But, I won’t.
3.
A correct prediction implies a correct reasoning. A
hole dug will fill with water. That hole will become
a lake. I can’t breathe when I am in a lake. I can
breathe when I am in a hole. Between the two,
the lake is the beautiful one. The breath is the
irrelevant one. I wish swim was something we
could do, regardless of how close or near we
were to a body of water.
What are you doing?
Oh, I am swimming, right here in our home.
Just like you said you would!
Just like I said I would!
4.
The air-holding water explanation
is just a
simplification.
Begin moving my hands in
a scooping
motion.
Am I moving forward
or am I
just pulling the distance
toward me?
But maybe that’s all there is.
To this. To this.
Every motion
is digging.
Every motion
is swimming.
Can you hold me
here for just a
little longer?
5.
But what about relative humidity?
Moisture collects & I am weighed
down. Who could have guessed?
Even windows get tired of waiting.
Outside, the weather threatens
to threaten. Arrows, dropped
rather than shot. Blood still draws,
though. It draws a portrait of
you, the first time you went under-
water. You had every reason to
believe you wouldn’t come back up.
That you took air for granted, & the
last time you breathed in was the
last time you breathed in. What were
you waiting for? It doesn’t matter.
I’m still waiting.
6.
What about boiling? It clearly
depends on the air pressure.
The landscape is simple
enough when you’re lying
facedown. If it’s water,
you’re dead. If it’s earth,
you’re dying. I have a way
to make this better. I
take out my lungs. I don’t
need the trees anymore.
I take off my skin. The sun
is gone. Continue,
continue. What’s left
is a mess & a memory.
This process has long been
explaining itself. It’s your
turn. Oh, now, would you
look at that. It’s beginning
to rain.
Dalton Day is a literal dog person & MFA candidate in The New Writers Project at UT Austin. He is the author of the collection Actual Cloud (Saló Press) & the chapbooks Fake Knife (FreezeRay Press) & To Breathe I'm Too Thin (Hyacinth Girl Press, forthcoming). He can be found on tumblr & twitter.
