Avery Jackson Close Encounters

Close Encounters CENTRAL REVIEW • SPRING 2020 • 23

by Avery Jackson

When I left the womb and welcomed the world, silent and purple. Sick.

The smack of a basketball to the face, the crack of concrete against the skull my mother breathing life back into my lungs on the wooden kitchen table

Crossing fences and scaling rocks by Niagara Falls like mountain goats a shrill “Avery SUE!” snatches my ankles, bulges my eyes, and burns my face until an inward force pulls me off the edge toward safety

When the car full of teenage boys, sweaty with summer heaviness, slows its roll and the strange elusive creatures stare with eyes on fire, lips curled and moistened with intention, they dribble out sticky salutations and questions of destinations I smile all the way home until she tells me my heart should thump, not flutter

I am a timepiece, made with cogs that made the women before me I time myself as I giggle my way past signs that say Do Not Enter the clock stands still as I watch myself fall downstairs, run my toe under chairs the bells clang and the hands tick as I shrink into large crowds and dim rooms I am not what I expected, yet everything I hoped to be

My surface, shining and scarred, shows what I’ve seen after all this time

I am fractals of feminine fear, aged alongside an internal mechanism unshaken by decades of different villains, some with gnawing teeth, some with bills and scriptures and still I am bubbling with curious intrusiveness, trudging along the Earth’s body she reaches her arms past an extended belly, wrapping me in warmth until the only thing that smothers is the sickness within her