The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

by Katya Apekina

I squeeze her hand

his voice is wet.

But he just smiles like an asshole

Mae doesn’t answer me, turns to face the wall. Finally, when I’m almost asleep I hear her say: “Sometimes it feels like you and I grew up in different houses.”

bell in the fog—

He likes his birds with their wings broken,”

We’ve emerged on a clearing.

We fall down and we’re laughing like we share a set of lungs. The sky is so low that soon we’ll be able to touch it. Our hands reach up for it at the same time.

Something stabs through me, I don’t know if it’s joy or not, but whatever it is, it hurts and I don’t want it.

All the characters are me. That’s what the writing process is like. It’s schizophrenic. A person talking to himself. Robert might’ve had biographical features similar to Fred’s, but he wasn’t Fred. He was me. They were all me. So, yes, it’s deeply autobiographical in that sense.

his breath is on my face even when he isn’t here.

I pictured him all-powerful and heartless, but now I see that there’s no wizard behind the curtain,

It’s impaling me, I think, as it finally hits against something. A lung? This is how I’d like to die, death by dick, mind totally blank.

When you’re forced to acknowledge mortality you stop wasting time.

He is the only one who is nice to me. Why have I been pushing him away? I’m sorry. I’m

I understand why, if I were a person who made art, I would have found her compelling.

God, I thought she was dumb sometimes. It was just like her to think dying was special. Dying is not special. Everybody does it.

each of us surrendered & became a stitch on god’s mantle, a hair on his head.