Salmon
Sophia Rose Smith
Colored ripe and stumbling— caught
further and back down stream. You've found your way
between notebook lines, past the margins, (college-ruled),
loosened the blue stripes with a seam ripper.
Hair braided and pushed into your palm— your fingers
rip between the three fat trunks in search of equilibrium:
chunky velvet and glass noodles. You’ve fleshed out
the whorls in your hands, left prints of ink in the fresh
snow. By autumn the marks in the mirror seem to dehaze
delusions, caught in the blindspots between
streetlamps and gutters. Beneath skin is paler flesh
to fit their crayon colors. It can be scrawled in
a waxy film on printer paper, but that can be scraped away
with fingernails. You’ve fought your way pounding the
waterfalls upstream. Caught: you ripped up the balance
of their symmetry. You will find a place in the world and how
to speak it. Find it in the full words buttressed behind your teeth.