Winter 2021 | Occasus | Issue 11.1

Mercy

There is a woman who breaks fishes’ spines
On an old rotting deck that I know
In a fleece as green as lake water,
She is silent
She is pregnant
She is slowly moving scales aside,
Nestling her fingers
Wet into flesh
Silver and writhing
She plucks out the hard glass of a perch’s eye
To roll like a warm marble
Between her palms
 

She did not catch the fish
She won’t eat it either
Doesn’t prefer swallowing
Around needle-thin bones,
Too little for marrow, too light
Tends to like things a bit meatier
No matter,
She breaks the fishes’ spines all the same.
 
Quiet as the morning.
Pregnant as the water.
Sitting cross-legged,
Above the flat and absent lapping
Of a long-gone lake
 
With a snap,
My mother performs her mercy.

Emma Graham is a fourth-year student finishing up a major in English Language and Literature at Western. She likes to write experimental stories about childhood, memories, fragmantation, lesbianism, and ghosts. She has a particular fondness for things that are strange. Her favourite author is Thomas King and she is currently devoting most of her time to losing her fear of the dark.