"An Effort to Stabilize My Internal Temperature" by Chloe Hooks

He’s a bit of a bombast, that man of mine. His dark hair shines – as if oil is creeping out

of his skull. It slickens his joints, jaw, hips, the wide length of his palm, which splays slightly,

then contracts to pluck an impossibility out of the air and wrap it into possible, into pretty, into a

dream. Like a baby in a blanket. A little blue box.

One evening, it’s too much. I yank his hand out of our bed, pull it into the swamp. I hold

it high above my head, waiting for the salivated costal rain to dissolve his magic. The creases in

his palm are fault lines where we rub hard against each other and birth things I prefer not to look

at in the daylight. There is a gurgle of thunder. A purple light appears on the horizon, all round

me. After a heavy breath, it softens, fades.

For the first time in decades, I can breathe easy. I decide to stick my toes in the water.

Samson The Alligator watches me. He would like to drag me down to the bottom, swirl my body

in the black mud over and over and over until all my bones are gelatinous and I could be spread

onto two pieces of moss like mayonnaise on a po’boy sandwich. But he decides not to tread any

closer. Like me, he’s wary. Like me, he has one eye that’s gone yellow and seamless, thanks to

someone we loved too much. He watches me, and I watch him. We are waiting for someone to

make a mistake, but neither of us move.

That’s alright, we say to each other, I’m all out of rush.

Chloe Hollowell Hooks is a writer from Austin, Texas. Her previous publications include Gulf Coast, Red Mud Review, and Duke Magazine, among others. A Duke graduate, she received her Master’s of Fine Arts in Writing from Columbia University. Her website is www.chloehollowellhooks.com.