Frozen at a Glance

Photo by Haylee Morman

I’m drenched in the wetness of the cool air, my glasses streaked from the remnants of the rain spitting at me before I got in the river. I’m kept afloat by your spare, a bright yellow kayak, blinding against the deep bluish brown of the water, the filtered gray of the sky. The skeg—that’s what you called it, the fin thing under me—is broken. It’s my first time doing this and even the boat doesn’t want me to have an easy go of it. I’m like a leaf resting just on the surface of a puddle, pushed and pulled and spun by the slightest exhales. I need a break. Pausing, ceding the fight against the current, I lay the paddle across my lap, watching you pull further ahead of me. You’ve spotted something, I’m sure, a bird or a buoy. Something you deem worthy of your attention, worthy by means of existence, worthy without feeling bone-froze. Here, on the river, I can’t imagine a world where I feel anything but cold again.