Standard Lesson
You take the monster to the sea
because the nervous system runs
on sodium: voltage-gated
channels conducting ions triggering action
potentials, discharging neuro-
transmitters from synapses – the gap across
which neurons talk. Too much slander and the body
makes seizures and disturbed
sleep, clutches the heart
like pearls. Too little and the whole grid
shuts down in protest. Your once lover
told you she wanted to set
your bar. That your expectations were hot
water in a rental – below the legal definition
of habitable. She could not offer a house
but she wanted you
to make herself at home
in hers, to sleep like the bed-
side wasn’t full of someone
else’s water glasses or in the guest
room in case of wives returned home
to shore. Like good patients, good girl-
friends ask nothing
but what’s offered, never back-
channel second opinions. No doctor
specializes in monsters so you become a one-
woman investigation: explaining physiology
to experts who insist no body can live
wired this way, testing to determine
it’s vital range, if blood
should be this labile, if it’s pearly white
eyes are meant to roll snakes.
Transformation Lesson
You take the monster to the gorge
where oysters spit clean
water through closed teeth, transmute
discomfort into productive
coughs, nitrogen into stiffer
skin. The monster crawls
upcurrent like spawning fish. To you
there’s no difference between at or in
water, the former implies the latter
like a shadow. But illness took
your swimming breath, calc’d your lungs, lit
every hair on fire ‘til your mane
tore out in ember fists. Memories
come thick like a bad
blood draw or a stuck zipper. The infallible
logic of fevers. The months
you were too sick to know
the difference and believed yourself well
enough to bear bad news. You sleeping
beautied through hell and woke closer to middle
age, mistress twice over, whose lover who wished
she’d left before the spell broke. You look up memory
loss hoping to explain her
absence and the monster’s
presence – the apple to your tree – the dead
months her eyes won’t match her mouth.
Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. Her first book, Allodynia (Palimpsest Press, 2022), was long-listed for the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her chapbook, Remitting (Baseline Press, 2019) won the bpNichol Prize. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point.
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