Chestina Craig: We Are Both Afraid of Everything
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
I am obsessed with the drowning of Natalie Wood
I think about her all the time,
us seaside girls, mostly
when I am inches from sleep
or flying across the water like an albatross,
or soaking in the unforgiving heat of a bath
in college for three months I lived
one cove away from where her body was found,
our strip of island so small you could walk
west to east & look out to Los Angeles
& down at her cavern
someone built a bench on that cliffs edge,
I remember always throwing a stone at it
before sitting down
to scatter any rattlesnakes using its shadow
& it was still a tiny bravery to let your ankles
swing over the edge
that fall everything was so dry,
I remember even the cactus were dying,
I cried over every inch of the land,
lost help to the ground that needed real water,
but most of all I remember swimming there
the few of my classmates comfortable
enough to drive the tiny skiffs shuttling us
between home & the blue water
& when we back rolled out of the boats
that’s all there was, nothing forever,
except the sunlight cutting through
like a fillet knife till it couldn’t go any deeper
& I remember being shocked
& not at all, by how fast a girl could sink down there
& she was still a girl pretty & sinking,
like all of us
I wonder how she could go missing
from the men who love her, for so long
& not be found till light
sometimes I walk away from my boyfriend
& wonder if he will follow
I think no one knows
if she feared the water, or needed it.
sometimes when a wave makes a ragdoll
of my body, I am never sure if there will be air again
we are both afraid of everything
& nothing,
we are so alike, we are so alike.
In which I talk to the nurse at Planned Parenthood about Mercury Retrograde & Hypochondria
everything is always breaking
“define the symptoms of everything”
mostly my body
“describe the relationship of your body to destruction”
the way it spins backwards into
an invisible sickness
or we are moving against a current
slugging through what could hurt us
“I don’t see anything wrong with you”
maybe it is just phantom
a ghost problem I can give my blame
“what are you so afraid of?”
I do not know whether it will be
the way I move,
or what I orbit,
that will take me first.
Chestina Craig lives in California with her cat. Her work has been published by Crab Fat Magazine, Sea Foam Mag, Button Poetry and others. She has presented her work at The Presidents Commission on The Status of Women, The Young Women’s Empowerment Conference, & more. She has a bachelor’s degree in marine biology and sometimes pets sharks or hangs out with octopi. She hopes that one day she will only be required to wear flowy clothing, study the ocean, and get paid to have too many feelings. Her chapbook “body of water” came out October 2017 with Sadie Girl Press
