currently i want to be a frozen guppy 

Allegra Lisa

you used to feed your guppies apple slices,
and the day i got thorns in my face,

we found a fish stuck in the ice by the floral couch
chair sitting in mud.

after this discovery, you began freezing
your own guppies in small plastic containers,

and burying them by the tree with
peeling bark.

bombpops and icees and frozen guppies with
apples in their pin-sized stomachs made homes 

of the shelves in our garage freezer. 
our summers were spent with this knowledge.

and we still fried eggs on the concrete
beside the hot tub,

dug up old jars and bottles in the back forty, and
snuck into the old witches' backyard. 

the summer before you turned eight, the man
with the cows shot at us when we stumbled

too close to his livestock, and
you laughed it off. 

because nothing could scare this
freckled, brown-haired tomboy with lightning legs.

this girl climbed trees barefoot and unearthed
fish graves without even thinking about the ghostly consequences.

she ate ants and sat on the sinking couch, and
for a whole year,

saw our next door neighbor's guppy lips every time
she closed her eyes.

in our early summers we could pretend
it was the bodies in the freezer that kept everyone away. 

that to be so adventurous we had to be lionhearted
and not running from something. 

years later, i find myself wanting
to be one of your summer guppies, frozen with their eyes open. 

a rigid body watching our young bodies in
motion. 

a soon to be buried observer, unaware of how swiftly
summer ends. 

ALLEGRA LISA is a Creative Writing Major attending Interlochen Arts Academy. She is from Illinois, though she's spent her summers in Alaska ever since she was a child. She enjoys writing poetry and scripts.