
On Hesitation by Kerri French
And then one day I felt the edges
of my body contemplate
the lake
as I paced the length of the bridge
the metal beneath my feet
shifting
the way I imagine a train’s tracks turn
towards sky when left alone
which is to say my body felt
like there was nothing left but sky
its length left alone to splinter
like tracks across my skin
I saw the heads of turtles rise
slowly from the water
Thursday’s sunlight sudden and red
how once I was five and saw
hundreds of jellyfish attack
a girl in the shallow edges
of the ocean
the sudden welts rising
across her stomach like a sunset
I knew I would always recall
the same way I recall
a girl that must have been me
my thoughts reaching for jellyfish
even
in the clear depths of a lake
which is only another way
of saying
I reached for any name
but mine
the day I felt my life was no more
than a single paragraph
no punctuation or pause
Kerri French is the author of Every Room in the Body (Moon City Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Moon City Poetry Award and the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in Washington Square Review, BOAAT, Copper Nickel, The Journal, Mid-American Review, and Barrow Street.
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