40.0
bottom of the lake
contents
i. the lake
ii. run-on sentence
iii. the cottage
iv: unmarked grave
v: under the highway sign
vi. a conversation with a girl i once loved
vii. a study in returning to your hometown
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the lake
my childhood is a catalogue
of mismatched memories which all begin and end
with the murky lake at the bottom of the farm.
we rode our bikes down there and you fell off
skinning up your knees and bleeding a part of you into the dirt forever.
we sat on the water’s edge and convinced ourselves
of the monsters beneath the surface and ignored
the monsters we welcomed through our front door.
we spoke of god and magic and the way the darkness felt
when it sat outside our window.
we packed up and moved when the water from the lake
leaked into our home and dragged us from our beds.
there was something in the water back in that small town
and what scares me
is the idea that it might have come from me.
run-on sentence
here is the spot where my sister said she saw god
where our limbs took root by the trees
and we committed our souls to the land.
my sister had a crow she locked in her room
no one spoke of it; we all knew it existed
the crow died on a sunday and my sister called it god’s will
i don’t tell her the ghosts bother me at night
there is a place at the back of the farm
that god forgot. my sister points to it and tells me
when she dies, this is where she will stay
and i tell her she will find me waiting
there was a fire in the milking sheds and three boys died
the back of the farm is cold, and crows
don’t fly here anymore. the trees are bare.
my sister comes to me that night
she says, sorry about the body in the lake
i say, it’s okay, i dumped mine there too
RUN-ON SENTENCE: in which two independent clauses are joined without an appropriate conjunction