UNTOWARD
Eileen Tabios

She has not looked back for three years. For three years, she lived her life by skimming the thinnest surfaces of an ice-covered body of water -- what she did for ecstasy billowed the sails pulling her iceboat. She could twitch the rudder so easily to return to thicker ice or solid ground. But bliss is addictive, even as she feels her bones thinning from a lack of rest. She sensed that looking behind herself would present the painful image of white shards fragmenting black water. So she continues to knife towards the horizon as if the horizon could be a destination. Perhaps a point exists ahead where the ice gives way to warm water thickened by salt -- it doesn't make her less or more eager. "Our deepest sense of what is fair and generous gets tossed aside so quickly in favor of a powerfully racing heart."* Untoward, she has grown accustomed to breathing through her drowning.



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* Quote is from "My Russian" by Deirdre McNamara (Ballantine, 1999)