Shiners, Isabelle Claire Edgar

Leland Quarterly | Winter 2022

Shiners

Isabelle Claire Edgar

You said it’d be sexy if I drowned. A dark lip. The last oval button undone. And when you point a flashlight on the shoreline the shiners jump like you’ve boiled the water beneath their bellies and you grab one, mid air and put it in your pocket, silver and cold with your keys, for me to find later.

We were sitting on the floor and you shook out your hair for dandruff or fog and I wondered if everyone is a little bit perverse. In some way. A dream of storing an eyelash or a hangnail beneath the floorboards. You trace the ridge of my collarbone with your fingertip and then fall asleep.

I don’t set alarms because of the clock with red lettering that woke me to a radio report of the eighteen year abduction of the girl with the butterfly ring. I was born with a strawberry birthmark above my left ear and everyone thought I was bleeding. I don’t know why it disappeared.

I pretend to be on the phone when I walk up those stairs that connect the sidewalks where the lights don’t shine. I say I know, I know and so my achilles doesn’t get slit and added to the rubber band ball, you know, become inelasticated, I shine a light under the car, before stepping close enough to sit down and unbutton my coat and drive home in the fog.

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