Having returned from a trip, I found the lake

Theodora Ziolkowski

seemed less blue         & more dramatic        chopped sapphire

I unwrapped a cup from our move               The newspaper I’d used to pack it

            told of a dead woman found in a hotel         

freezer            (that was the headline)                      I remember that story

& think of her             

often                Later, when the scallops arrive

            in dry ice         I wear a baseball glove on one hand             an oven mitt   

on the other    to remove the plump discs     furred 

            with frost        I still need to rinse out the cup

& crumple the paper              The woman supposedly died 

            from alcohol poisoning          not to mention            

hypothermia               which begins but does not end

            with shivering            Last week, I was wandering

around Notre Dame Cathedral                     & yesterday                it was on fire               

            Before my trip, I replayed the footage          

at the airport              Three beehives near the church roof survived         

            Now I boil water & watch the teabag bloat 

According to their keeper     the bees were responsible 

            for 165 lbs of honey 

each year                    I fold the article about the dead girl             neat as a hankie          

            & tuck it in my underwear drawer   It’s personal,

says the Parisian interviewed on TV

She looks like a cat    wrapped in scarves    Another mourns 

the cathedral was like a parent                     Losing her was like losing 

            a mother, the translator says with earnestness                       Did he know 

that scallops swim by propelling 

            themselves?                They open & close their shells                      (the only

bivalve mollusk to do this)                You can’t leave them

            on the heat for too long         They’ll turn into rubber                     I drown

the scallops in honey              The recipe calls for four garlic cloves

            but I have a sweet tooth        & never stopped 

associating garlic with blood                         

            & vampires                 I put on a robe & slippers, coil my neck

in scarves as I suck    the soft fishy purses               standing over 

            the stove                     Now the lake has shriveled 

in on itself                   & my body is an island                      forgets how to float

            I add Four Roses Bourbon    to the cup that still smells like our old house           

                        & everyone wants 

a piece of the cathedral                      Spira, spera, wrote Victor Hugo         

            now that its spire       puckered from the attic         “The forest” under the roof

it’s called         though all the trees cut for its wood             are gone

            Sometimes I worry I will shrug my skin off             like a coat       

as I dream I fall asleep beside the Häagen-Dazs     in a freezer                             

where the tilapia filets are stacked 

like Lincoln Logs       I think to my dream self:       Stupid,

            where are your clothes?               Sometimes victims of hypothermia are discovered

nude                            This is a different version

It’s always cold in some part of the world

Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of On the Rocks, winner of a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award, and Mother Tongues, winner of The Cupboard's 2015 Contest. A Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee, her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Glimmer Train, The Writer's Chronicle, and Short Fiction (England). Theodora's work has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Alumni Association (University of Alabama), and Inprint (Houston, Texas). She has taught in the English Department at the University of Houston and the University of Alabama, and has led creative writing workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and humor writing at a variety of Houston establishments, including Inprint, Grackle & Grackle Writing Enterprises, and Writespace. Theodora has served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Fiction Editor for Big Fiction, and Assistant Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review. She is the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing.