Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic of the mopped floors and wiped-down doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks and armpits. Your teacher means well, even if he butchers your name like he has a bloody sausage casing stuck between his teeth, handprints on his white, sloppy apron. And when everyone turns around to check out your face, no need to fush red and warm. Just picture all the eyes as if your classroom is one big scallop with its dozens of icy blues and you will remember that winter your family took you to the China Sea and you sank your face in it to gaze at baby clams and sea stars the size of your outstretched hand. And when all those necks start to crane, try not to forget someone once lathered their bodies, once patted them dry with a fluffy towel after a bath, set out their clothes for the first day of school. Think of their pencil cases from third grade, full of sharp pencils, a pink pearl eraser. Think of their handheld pencil sharpener and its tiny blade.

I've become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie, Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children. What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras, a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams.

Come in, come in. The water’s fine! You can’t get lost here. Even if you want to hide behind a clutch of spiny oysters — I’ll find you. If you ever leave me at night, by boat, you’ll see the arrangement of red-gold sun stars in a sea of milk. And though it’s tempting to visit them — stay. I’ve been trained to gaze up all my life, no matter the rumble on earth, but I learned it’s okay to glance down into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you know where to look. Clouds of plankton churning in open whale mouths might send you east and chewy urchins will slide you west. Squid know how to be rich when you have ten empty arms. Can you believe there are humans who don’t value the feel of a good bite and embrace at least once a day? Underneath you, narwhals spin upside down while their singular tooth needles you like a compass pointed towards home. If you dive deep enough where imperial volutes and hatchetfish swim, you will find all the colors humans have not yet named, and wide caves of black coral and clamshell. A giant squid finally let itself be captured in a photograph, and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds of violet when it silvers you near. Who knows what will happen next? And if you still want to look up, I hope you see the dark sky as oceanic — boundless, limitless — like all the shades of blue in a glacier. Listen how this planet spins with so much fin, wing, and fur.

To keep me from staying out late at night, my mother warned of the Hell Pig. Black and full of hot drool, eyes the color of a lung—it'd follow me home if I stayed past my curfew. How to tell my friends to press Pause in the middle of a video, say their good-byes while I shuffled up the stairs and into my father's waiting blue car? How to explain this to my dates, whisper why we could not finish this dance? It's not like the pig had any special powers or could take a tiny bite from my leg—only assurances that it was simply scandal to be followed home. When my date and I pull into my driveway and dim the lights, we take care to make all the small noises that get made in times like these even smaller: squeaks in the seats, a slow spin of the radio dial, the silver click of my belt. Too late. A single black hair flickers awake the ear of the dark animal waiting for me at the end of the walk. My fumbling of keys and various straps a wild dance to the door—the pig grunting in tune to each hurried step, each of his wet breaths puffing into tiny clouds, a small storm brewing.

Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared not even whisper before I walked down the aisle in white. You never worried if our families would clash, if they would clang like the clutch of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops, begging for our trail mix. You never worried about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves— things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us, a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once I don't mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger if we ever need it again. We made it one year without a compass and we’re not about to start now.

(a found poem, composed entirely of e-mails from various high school students) If I were to ask you a question about your book and sum it up into one word it would be,Why? I think I like Walt Whitman better than you. I just don't get literature, but for a fast hour and a half read, your book takes the cake. I like how you organized the lines in that one poem to represent a growing twisting bonsai tree. Are you going to get a rude reaction when you meet that one guy in that one poem? I guess you never know. You are very young to be a poet. I also like how your poems take up an entire page (it makes our reading assignment go faster). In class we spend so much time dissecting your poems and then deeply analyzing them. I think I like Walt Whitman better than you, but don’t take offense—you are very good too! You are young, You are young and pure and really just want to have a good time. Thank you we have taken a debate and you are a far better poet than Walt Whitman. And I loved how your poems were easy to read and understand. Hello my name is Alicia. We read you book and I just loved it. We also read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There was no competition there. I liked your book a whole lot better. It was an easy read. But poetry is not my favorite type of literature. Sometimes I am offered drinks and guys try to talk to me but I too just brush it off and keep dancing. Every once and a while the creepy mean guys try to offer you things and then they say something. What would you do? Lastly, I was wondering if you ever wrote a poem that really didn’t have a deeper meaning but everyone still tried to give it one anyways? Walt Whitman is better than you.

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms. Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats. Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar, the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter. So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only for a brief whiff. I want our summers to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick, the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse— then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance, bit, and bite.Wait. I have made them up—all of them— and when I say I am married, it means I married all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves. Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many slices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great meal for us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling pot on the stove. One changes the baby, and one sleeps in a fat chair. One flips through the newspaper, another whistles while he shaves in the shower, and every single one of them wonders what time I am coming home.

You elbow me with your corduroy jacket when a box chock-full of antique marbles comes up. I can’t hear your whispers above the auctioneer’s racket. The clipped speech of the auctioneer cracked me up when you impersonated him in bed. Like a wild, thick mop I soak up every copper smell from your corduroy jacket. In two days, I will drive you to the airport, packed with other couples pressed tightly at the top of the escalator. Lines sear my cheek from your corduroy jacket when we hug—then a quick kiss good-bye tacked on at the end. I’ll finger the rim on the paper coffee cup you leave in my car. When I hear your name I can’t forget how your long torso pressed against my bare back, bluish in this early light. Your fingers shot into me, popped my spine into a wicked arch. There is no lack of how it haunts me still—what I bid—lost, sacked and wrapped for other girls. I should have looked up to see who else was bidding, but I studied the folds in your jacket. My limit is spent, loud and certain as the auctioneer’s racket.