Last Queer on Earth by Sara Potocsny

Day 52

I went by the creek today. The one behind the factory. It’s still running. The creek is, not the factory. The little fish still dart around at the bottom like phosphenes. They’re so fast, zipping this way and that. They never can make up their minds, can they? Always changing direction, finding something new to run from.

“And I thought I was bad!” I snorted, and could have sworn some of them stopped there, or at least made a pivot at the sound of my voice. I took off my socks and shoes and walked out across the smooth stones to the middle, sat down on one with a long face. I put my feet in the water and found it cold for May. A tiny silver fish swam up and around the toes of my left foot, kissing them and kissing them, but I didn’t feel a thing.

“I’m gay.” I whispered. It kept kissing me. “I’m gay! Or at least, I’m queer. I really am. And if it’s okay, I’d like you to be the one I come out to.” And a little tear fell down from my face. And no sooner did it hit the surface of water than she was gone. 

On the walk home I said it to a robin. “I’m queer!” She flew away immediately, but only because she’d heard me. To the big green mat of lichen and moss on the broadside of a boulder. To the Mahoney’s cat, Carl, who still won’t let me feed him after all these days. I whispered it through the fairy doors at the trunks of several big trees of varied species, and to the little wind, growing harder at my back as I neared home. “I’m queer,” I told them all. I yelled it! Then I whispered it, then I said it so slowly it seemed to slink back inside my mouth. 

Sara Potocsny lives in New York. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her work is in or forthcoming in Hobart, Radar, HAD, Juked, Perhappened, and others. You can find her on twitter @sarapotocsny.

27 August 2021