Breath & Shadow

POETRY

MARGARET PRICE

Drinking Saltwater

         For Sara

From birth we shared a freakish
gift: we could live on saltwater.
Our tongues would cringe, throats contract,
but when we lacked for fresher prospects
we knew where to lap. We sucked

in buckets, stored the slag in crusts
around our nostrils, viscera,
and lips. Like salt–poisoned cattle
we would stargaze, amble backward
and in circles. Sometimes we convulsed.

There was comfort in the way this left
no room for anything but high alarm.

Now we've dropped, by whose design
I couldn't tell you, into this flat
Green lake. Apparently it's shoreless.
Choking, treading water, we absorb
our options: stay afloat, or fail to.

This was not our dream of freshness.
This water's as thin as air, dragging
at our newly heavy limbs. It smells
of organisms, and tastes bloody,
Splenda–sweet. We cough, spit, drink again.

Porosity has always been our gift.
We're soft like that. I feel it coming in.

Margaret Price is a professor of writing at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She has several disabilities, including an autoimmune disease called IgA nephropathy, PTSD, and depression/anxiety. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, the Michigan Quarterly Review, the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and Ms. magazine. She is currently at work on a novel titled Knocking Alex Up.

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