Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

Nothing could stop us from our descending, our legs were running the sort of running that wasn’t even running anymore just desperately trying to keep up with the rushing world, the speed of the ground moving under us and only our clumsy skinny legs, idiot technologies, to keep us from crumbling in a heap, and my sister laughing, I was terrified and shouted like it but Roya was laughing while the pond kept getting bigger and bigger, I was trying to figure out how to get the world to slow down, slow down enough to let my legs catch up to its racing, but my sister the starfish less than a meter tall was laughing, gobbling like a turkey, holding my hand and still running straight ahead, her legs not even a blur anymore but a straight single shape, like the rims of cars in car commercials that stay still even as the car curves down the road, and finally the pond was everything in front of us and somehow I slid, I can’t remember exactly how it started but I think I jammed my sneaker into the frozen dirt, locking my legs, kicking up ice, and I slid that way and the earth stopped moving maybe too suddenly, I felt my brain slosh against my skull, that fast, maybe the earth even moved backwards a bit as if to correct itself, and in my sliding I let go of Roya’s hand, the world stilling around me I could finally see how fast she was moving, all rush and wild, I remember I shouted Roya no! as she lifted her hand, the hand that had held mine, into the air like a boxer, like a boxer’s t...