Baltimore

“Coral Reef” by Alexey Adonin

Climb on the banana seat facing backward, a chance to die even if you fly trying, the big kid

and you two spines touching, bowl-legs sticking out from the pedal’s teeth and

launch

go belly yelling down the hill smooth stutter smooth

a wheel catches on a rock, in the groin

get chucked into dirt that tastes like a nickel pulled from ground beef, doesn’t hurt, roll

over sky-facing in the cut tang of grass, the far away blue lapping with its slow cloud tongue

the softened asphalt calling, come, come taste these warm gasoline pancakes

outside is as good at the end as the beginning, every single day

all of you, are good

 ***

your mom doesn’t look, holds the barrel of the curling iron too close to your skin like she

doesn’t hear the sizzle, for that turned-under scared octopus look, you pull away she pulls you back

but look they are out!

the kids are out!

you run out

all of you stream into one wiggly clot like happy ants, stand in a line hilltop, hands clenched

around foil-dipped beetles, a galaxy spinning in every fist, who can stand the tiny pinches the

longest, first one who can’t runs down into the clover screaming

it’s too much you run

you’re all down on the buzzing clover, waving dandies gentle to free the pips, goodbye, bye,

bye, then it stung me a girl cries, pulls down her shorts and a tiny turd like a water-logged tootsie roll

plops out, for years you believe it goes: bee sting – cry – poop

till one year, you and your mom go to a big park with some other families and a bee zaps you

on the chin and the lady who looks like your mom, is not your mom, says

it thought you were a flower

and your mom says, you must have done something wrong

but not now now it’s time for trees

here, step here, they say making a basket of their hands so you can leap into the branches,

pitch crabapples down at their open fish faces, aim, fire, fill a milk carton full till a short-haired lady

marches up I’m sure you’re a very nice boy but you can’t do this, a very nice boy, you’re not a boy, you don’t

care but you’re not a boy

you throw the carton at her, crabapples scattering like a hot pour of marbles,

all of you yelling: get out of here lady!

and she goes, she’s scared, she is one, you are many

and that was close

you all skip turn at the tin tinkle of the red truck into the bulb of the cul-de-sac, no money

no problem one of you stretches a candy necklace out for a bite, the red truck comes every day until

a tall mom looks inside and says he doesn’t have any pants on, which is unrelated to candy, which is

random but after that no more truck and you understand, the rule is pants

you roll and climb and shout till the sky turns skinned-knee pink, you sprinkle pinches of

dirt on each other’s kneecaps until they turn violet in shadow, the glass doors squeak open and you

all walk backwards into them waving, see you tomorrow, see you tomorrow

if you knew you’d stay outside,

ignore sky-time, play into the dark, breathe up the mushroom wet, run a brave hand through

the clover even though it stings sometimes, you’d let a big kid swoosh you down the big hill on a

bike backwards even though you are so scared

if you knew how things change

that someone moves in

into your mom’s room

if you knew they’d whisper random things at you ugly things

if you knew she won’t believe even though she’s in the room when it happens, you’d stay

outside but you don’t know, how could you know

so you wave goodbye, go inside, alone, eat, wash, try to sleep, try to see in the dark

if you knew that your mom starts to keep you inside, that you will start to sit when you want

to stand, stand when you want to sleep, cry when you are on fire, say no even when you’re hungry,

blink when you are surprised, if you knew

you would stay outside together, where all of you are good, be dangerous, poke the furred

jerky of a squirrel, leap across lava to grass, grass to lava, inhale each other’s brine, lick penny water

from the hose, look for lucky clover, you’d stay outside roll down hills until you stink of worms roll

into the soft ends of the day

but you don’t know, that it ends, how it ends             

About the author

Lydia Kim is a Tin House alum whose work has appeared in Catapult, poeisis, Reflex Fiction, and Longleaf Review and in the anthologies And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing, Lunchbox Moments, and Non-White and Woman. She is a recipient of a 2023 de Groot Foundation grant and 2022 Nomadic Press Fiction Award, working on her first novel. 

about the artist

Alexey Adonin is a Belarusian artist who began his artistic journey at nine. He developed an interest in various hobbies, such as science fiction literature, history, biology, paleontology, geography, and astronomy. In the early 1990s, he and his family relocated to Israel, where he continued to hone his craft and explore new ideas and themes. Alexey's work has been displayed internationally and acquired by private collections worldwide (https://www.alexeyadoninart.com).