The psychiatrist tells her
to treat her life like
a science experiment.
And later the maze
through the biology building
to teach a class begins
with signs masking-taped
to double doors:
Do not let out water striders.
In the bathroom she finds Jesus
bugs wandered away
from the graduate lab
and walking on water
in a stopped-up sink.
That night in her basement
in ankle-deep rain
she will light a pilot light
under the skitter of live wires.
Over her head sparks will fall
like flares. And in a month,
before choosing not
to evacuate before a hurricane,
she’ll write her social
security number on her arm
with waterproof eyeliner
like a label on a test tube.
But now, with a doorstop
and a pencil, she pries open
the bathroom window
to tempt the pond skaters
with a body of water, some
sharkpool for the brokenhearted.
When she calls them graceful,
and when she calls them
merciful, what she really means
is science. Of course they just
hover there in front of her,
like goddamned miracles,
as if hitting their antennae
against imaginary glass.
—Kristin Robertson
Kristin Robertson, who teaches English and creative writing at Tennessee Wesleyan University, is the author of Surgical Wing.
