GEORGICS — By Nala bazzi
artwork by James Keul
The silverfish in my room are fast fast fast. Normally I would just let them be -- I just let ants be, but the silverfish eat my books, dog ears and broken spines and all. I used to stress and kill them, expertly throwing something at them or suffocating them with a tissue, with a pearl handgun and a silk handkerchief, but he told me that he lets them out, out so they can live down. And so now I’m no more than an insect U-Haul. Which is fine, because his eyes are blue and mosquitoes like him better. He told me to let them live down, and I listened, though I never checked on them or paid their rent. The walls down are painted, the kitchen is clean because he plants trees and deletes emails and tells his mother he loves her.
But Down is not a pearl handgun. Down has no gold accents, it only whispers. He keeps telling me things I think I shouldn’t know. Today I wore a gold bracelet, tan and free. The bracelet smells like iron, like rust and eggs and blue. Mold, not buzzing flies or a clear windowpane. There is something beautiful in being limited. There is something beautiful in being loved. Today I took a picture of the sun, and his tree stroked the camera frame. He is awkward and skinny and tall, and his sneakers hug harder with every step. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t change his jacket, but not everyone is meant for gold. Gold is for ants, not silverfish, and his sneakers bow to no queen, his jacket to no god.
Every morning, a pretty boy walks to church and his mom goes to the mosque. She walks happy, thinking her son is safe with God. He sits down, content with her knowing so. They share lunch after, argue about customer service and liberal arts and whether climate change is real. He sips on a glass of Coke, she fusses about produce quality. She motions the waiter closer, he looks away. The pretty boy walks to church and his mom goes to the mosque, and then she calls the therapist and tells him her son won’t be coming. Or maybe the mom was the one who wasn’t coming. Honestly, I’m not sure.
A spider dangles from his head, where a forest stood a month ago. All of the boys cut their hair this time of year. It makes them look strong, it makes them look tough. It balances out the sun, so that when the light touches them they tan, not burn. My brothers are already tan. The eldest is the tannest, but in the dark he burns. My dad burns, blond and honey-eyed. He comes back ten times as tan as I am, around once a month. Me? I try, but I never tan and I never burn, though you can still see the lines on my shoulders.
Sometimes I go to sleep and picture the silverfish walking those lines, going down down down till they reach my toes. Once, I even found one under the house, far below the Rapunzel of stories, next to our car. I decided that I was right, then, to believe that down was a nice place to live. Because the silverfish were neither tanned nor burnt, and the boy just fell out the window to be with them.
Nala Bazzi is Lebanese, 18, living in the city of metro urine (and lights and love and fashion but those are really much less relevant), and a devout hater of public law modules. Some of her middle school stories were published in local anthologies.