Lauren Adkins

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A Koi Pond as the American Dream

Saffron in stagnant glass, koi chart
a relentless, circular transit. Flicking through a hand
-made, rigid view, bound, this small, ironed-flat stillness
doesn’t come close to the wild pulse of the river. And still—
to taste the air above would be a lung-failure—a fatal rupture
to feed. They orbit a playground of dead
leaves and the unyielding skin of concrete. Above,
the waterfall roars mechanically, spilling
a descent that mimics motion but only feeds the same four corners. The world
outside is a rippled distortion, anchored
to a geometry they could never map themselves, conditioned
to rest in the fiction that the rock-wall is the edge
of existence. At the precipice, half-immersed,
a mountain of wet stone sits motionless. Algae and moss claim the skin
like a continent. The frog knows the language of the hinge—being
conceived in the water yet breathing the wind. To leap would be to un-anchor
from the loop, to abandon the safety of the four corners. It watches
the vastness of the unmapped, the heavy weight
of everything you never knew
you never knew.

Lauren Adkins is a graduate of Salisbury University with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Art. Her work has previously been featured in Salisbury University's literary magazine, The Scarab. She lives, reads, and writes in Salisbury, Maryland.