Sarah Brockhaus
Elegy for My Ninth Grade Natural Science Project
All day my hands stay only hands. Outthe window, the sky reflects off the windshield
of my car. The blue is so many windows away
from me it hurts. On the drive here I watched
all the lake birds nestled into the last
bit of water. I wondered what they made
of the reflection, did they think the sky
shrank with the lake? I said sorry out loud. I didn’t do
anything. I don’t. I think of the ducklings I raised
from eggs years ago, who never grew enough
to fly. They didn’t know what their wings were
for. I’ve made my life an apology ever
since. I could’ve stood behind the truck
that took them to the farm where the heat
lamp went out and their skyless bodies got so cold
they couldn’t remember how to stay bodies. I watched
their hearts learn to beat in their shells. I felt it, warm
rhythm in my palm. I coaxed them
out when it was time, stayed up all night to make sure
they could uncontain themselves. I didn’t know how
soon they’d go back to stiffness, back to being
so tightly formed there was no motion left, beats
slowing back down, undoing themselves. I’ve strung up
I’m sorry like a paper chain, looping one around
the other until the whole house is decorated
like a kindergarten classroom and I am still
inside, still worlds away from the sky, still warm.