| The 2River View | 29.4 (Summer 2025) |
On the day I turn one hundred, the June sun is ablaze, and all my dead animals come running down the beach, ecstatic. I’m a girl set loose on the shore, only my legs are hundred-year-old legs, and I love their splotchy varicose virility because by then, vanity has been hijacked by self-love. My daughters sit cross-legged like watchful buddhas, or they dance around, like they did when they thought no one was looking. My brothers smoke something sweet and hold hands. My husband is there in person or maybe as a ghost. Either way, our lips melt together like soft surfer’s wax, like Dali’s clocks. My parents are long dead, but I’ll be in touch with them soon. Such is the understanding between trees. People I remember fondly show up with their boom boxes and stinky feet. Even some of the ones I loathe pop by for the hell of it. We hum together like some extravagant soup, float and bubble and yap and cry and lick at our wounds that heal out here, in one hundred years of not-solitude. And after, when everyone is spent, we lie down on the hot sand and remember what it feels like to be alone.
The Yes of It All Have I told you that I used to put everything in my mouth? My mother’s nipple, for one, firm as a button, and the heart-attack red honeysuckle lining the fence. I plucked pomegranate seeds straight from their stained beds, stole loquats from the neighbor’s tree. Then there were sour things, like the oxalis along parking strips. I loved to gnaw on their stems until I saw a dog lift its leg on their heart-shaped leaves. Once, Lindsay teased me, and to punish her, I pierced her forefinger with the sharp tip of my tooth. She still has the scar. During finals, I chewed the inside of my thumb ‘til it bled. I slipped a beloved’s manhood into my mouth and gagged. After, I gazed up at the moon, worried he’d leave. There are lessons to be learned when you open too wide. Avoid sour grass. Don’t bite your best friend’s finger and be gentle to your own. Learn to have the sex you desire. Still, when I pass a rogue burst of honeysuckle, it all comes rushing backâhow I trusted in life’s simple taste, hungry as I was for the yes of it all. | |||
Sonya Schneider is a graduate of Stanford and holds an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. She now lives in Seattle, Washington. Her poetry has been published in journals such as The Penn Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, Rust & Moth, Salamander, and Tar River. |
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