UMLÄUT 2020 - THE PANDEMIC ISSUE
INFECTIOUS
Kaia Hobson
Organ Donation/Self Preservation
In that last second, I knew there was only one way to last, and yes, my head was nervous and regretful but
It’s hard to describe quiet adrenaline, how it moves so slowly over the course of years, how it materializes on the cusp of adulthood,
How I wish to walk no further when it does
Energy cannot evaporate from a grass field, our old bikes in the back, the first carpet I vacuumed, the bowls of cereal when I couldn’t yet reach the stove, or my father’s index finger I gripped so tightly learning to walk
I wonder where it goes
when the once constant beating is directed elsewhere
I stared down a hummingbird heart and had a fragile thought:
That used to be me?
My lungs grew to accommodate water
My wishlist from birth said: gills
So they threw me into an incubator for three weeks
And then, I went home
After dinners I lay on my back to help with the acidic pain I felt in my abdomen
Never seen a doctor
Some days I’d hollow myself out as if to prepare
for a blood donation
You were a giver,
and once I never was
It’s hard to digest the concentrated likeness of bile
because there was a time when
I thought I was a liver
The scarred magnolias grew over our names in Meg’s backyard
I don’t see her anymore, and I’d rather her forget we saw each other at all
A gourd cries, and the ground steams
I am sat still in disease-cutting heat,
muscles active in the soil
Smoke kills the weeds,
so what if it’s ash? What is this method?
I could make myself useful in another body, and that is what I did
I could make you dread seeing the metal worker
A toxic kidney in his past, a firefighter took my heart and stopped
taking from animals
I could make you love the metal worker and the firefighter for a reason only you know
See them from inside of your car, perhaps
You will never watch eggshells in the bin, or leave your house
You’ve never seen me like this, never should have been me
Only when I set fire to the canvas umbrella in 2013 did
things heat up so quickly around here
Retake the worms, kick the echo-stained clouds from your blinking eyes
Stare down at myself, exhaling in the ground. Breathing
is all you had to do to reproduce the sounds