Sofie Delidow

I’m Achilles and The Duplex is Hector’s Body

Fine enough. We could always be better.

You can’t see it in our faces, but we’re cold in that picture.
Even when I want to I can’t picture you when you turn to face me.
Mind you,
this was the cold shower summer of sixth grade,
the first year of many I’d misgender myself in French class,
so I clung wet-handed to a lot of things.
I cling wet-handed to a lot of things:
little bottles of hotel shower gel, the ghosts of your shoulders,
and I think about it now:
the game I played when I was 7, tout(e) seul(e),
where I held my breath
and held my breath
and waited for the Good Things to wash over me,
and I filled in the name brands with a tiny TM
like an Elementary School Capitalist Soldier.
It’s names.
It’s branding.
It’s the gum you can’t rub out of your skin,
the girl friendships you don't get over,
the 55 degrees when they took us to the beach,
when beach has the connotation of warmth.
We couldn’t swim. I dug a hole 55 deep and sat in it.
This was when it hit my ankles like low tide—
we'll never have a break this long again.
You don’t rest,
so I feel you breathe long and hold it in my hands,
trying to suffocate my id,
in case that makes the seconds you love me die slower.
—Fine enough. We could always be better.

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Sofie Delidow won 2nd place in the Charles Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest for Michigan High School students. For more information on the contest, please visit the Albion College English Department website.