by Marina Cone
she heard from her grandmother
that canker sores were signs
she’d been out at sea for too long
her metaphors might have been mixed
or her remedies in need of remedy
but at last cankers have caught up
her restless gargling of saltwater
is a swallow without swallowing
hope grumbles, digested into routine
perhaps old age is all it is, untenable reality
like a long-listened song grown
irritating with ripple-inducing bass
she’s listening to it in the doctor’s office
looking longingly at the aquarium
dreaming of the sea swallowing her
like the plastic skeleton on colourful stones
whose mouth yawns in practiced pleasure
and exposes exuberant canker sores;
she’s waiting for signs she’s really been at sea
because she can’t have lived landlocked
can’t be a dry skeleton posthumously
gifted to be nibbled at by polite goldfish.
Marina Cone (she / her) is a writer, game designer, woman, and PhD candidate in English at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka in Aotearoa. She spends much of her time contemplating the hope and terror of an empty Word document, and uses her writing as a vehicle to explore gender dysphoria and euphoria, womanness, platonic love, space, identity, and memory.
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