#small pond

The Last Water - CajsaStina Åkerström , 2024.

Swedish , b. 1967 -

Untitled (Small Pond), 2024, mixed media on canvas, 2x3 ft

We were softly enormous. Hooked on lengthening light, healthy calves pedaling to the trailhead. We knew everyone in every grocery store. We knew the code to the high school tennis shed. We learned language for the world around us, dogwood, larkspur, pointed to ants and said head, thorax, abdomen, back when we imagined the world narrow enough to name. Squatting above our reflections, we filled Ziploc bags with minnows, never considered the ways a body might change in its container. Last week in Brooklyn, coming down or hungover, I floated through the park with a friend. Magnolia he said. I put my left foot in front of my right. Gingko. Think of all the directions a life can take. It’s true I love spooning pâté and telling white lies, spinning while the first birds blow their trumpets and the budding world feels like mine again. I want wildness anywhere I can find it, in flowerless hours, the city a thicket of unnamable parts. I return to my corner of girlhood shrunken, shocked by the crabapple’s pink and the unapologetic dandelions, the way they remind me of yesterday’s concentric world. Throw a rock and the water will ripple further from where it started, each ring bewildered by the shape that came before.