Hills Lake by Katherine Ann Davis

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October 21, 2013 by northerncardinalreview

You are a child’s summertime:

ripples of sand smashed by bare feet,
minnow traps tied to a dock,

pine needles stuck between toes,
and splinters from picnic benches.

You are a spider flicked off a beach towel,
spinning a web between stone steps.

You are a cockroach in the toaster,
a snail caught in a Frisbee;

seaweed tangled in a boat prop,
and the drop-off we couldn’t go past.

You are mosquito bites scratched open and bleeding,
soaked in alcohol, covered in bandages,
stung by a mother’s breath.

You are my scars.

You are the one time I stood on my hands underwater
without fear of drowning.

—

Katherine Ann Davis is a resident of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Katherine Ann Davis is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee, where she is fiction editor of Grist: The Journal for Writers and is completing a novel about a failed collector.

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