Fish Soup – Johanna Hatlem

October 15, 2024

It was a nun who taught me to speak, taught me to attach language to objects. The nun’s perversion, that of desecrating an object by giving it a name, ruined me.

My eyes tracing the edges of the stone patio, I am drunk. Ella, Grace, Seraphina. Each stone represents a girl and each girl represents nothing. The totalizing erasure force of one name, one girl.

Girl and Boy on beach, Boy splashes Girl, Girl chasing after him, total collapse into heat. Collapse into limbs, ends of bodies. Cold creeps in, wet hair, setting sun, Boy keeps Girl warm with metabolic efficiency, warmth is better than fire. Stars watch on, wish they could swallow.

The longer I sit outside, the more likely it is she will call.

Boy and Girl stuck together from sweat, sleep, hair matted, mouths dry. Boy smiles, rises. Time to run, very far they must run today. Running down the beach, water pools in their left behind footsteps, rainbow meshed reflections.
        Boy and Girl forget language, forget names for things, they collect sticks for fire but can only remember letter “S” or numbers “083.” They collect S083’s all day.

I could, I suppose, call her myself. Leave a message on the machine:

“On my deathbed, I believe your meaning will at last be fully revealed. You, standing there in front of me, completely naked, naked of clothing, naked of skin, each moving aspect formerly underneath, seen now, by only me, and glowing. A bloody angel, your sparkly viscera shifting and finally, falling into place as exactly what I have always needed, all of my life.”

Every time Boy and Girl build structure they become unsatisfied with structure and sleep in open air again, sand like bed, musculature like structure, satisfying.

There is just no way I could have known, on the day in the cove with the blue lagoon in Cassis; watching her looking down at her feet, because she couldn’t bring herself to ask me for what she really wanted; I couldn’t possibly have known that this tan gangly creature in front of me was anything but a continuation of a creature I had encountered many times before in different forms. A series of fleshed girls, connected in blood, with the same instructions written on their souls, the same dictated pathways meant to intersect only once with mine.

I hated to see her looking down, looking sad, anyways. I picked her up by her legs and cast away the cloud of the moment, and she giggled and I took her down, and I married her in a way, right there. But I wish I had only stopped and understood, absorbed completely, took her hand, ran to the edge of a cliff and jumped off together, perfect, complete.

Girl is sick, Boy presses water onto lips, presses lips onto lips, not too hard, Girl is delicate. Her hair a collection of twigs and leaves, small insects, Boy gently combs out all debris. Boy forgets word for love, he knows the feeling he gets from looking at her pale face is bigger. He fears the feeling because on the beach there is hardly anything bigger than them, if Boy lifts up rock, a whole kingdom which he has dominion over is revealed. Boy holds Girl all night without sleeping.
        Girl is very sick, they cannot run today. Let Boy be gentle with her. There is no time in this place, nothing matters in this place but them, they are the biggest things here, they are the last things here, BOY and GIRL.

A call is received, not from the person I want. My friend Caroline wants me to come to a party tonight. I haven’t been to a party in a while. I miss women.

Girl wakes up okay, pushes Boy to ground, wrestles all feverish, wrestles to avoid saying anything else about “scary stuff” that’s all just “s s” to them. Boy uses wrestling to touch Girl as much as possible, to remember everything he forgot when he was letting her get better, touches all bones and eyelids, touches forehead, no heat.

One day, Girl and Boy will die, collapse into pile of death together, be married, have love, have children. They will discover forever, tear things apart, hold hands, go out too far and drag each other back. They are joined in one line, and maybe it never ends.

This party is boring, none of the conditions for “good party” are being met, the women are not very beautiful, or else hate me, or else are married. The same crowd and the same conversations. Culture runs around, so and so and so on. I am enjoying being drunk, the quality of the alcohol and the weird lemony basil confections the waiter keeps serving me.

The party ends much before I leave. As I depart, dawn is breaking over the city. I am still very drunk walking home. The longer I am away from home the more likely a dispatch is, but the truth is, I have not even heard her name in 2 years, except out of my own mouth in inquiry. My very legs feel not like my own, and the better part of my life feels over. Did I miss my own life in a blue-green cove in Cassis? Did I miss my call to come home? I am not sure, I am exhausted by the thought, exhausted by the women I rejected tonight who will be sending me messages in the morning, exhausted by the thought of looking for someone else with the right face, with the right flesh, with the perfect amount of teeth. In the morning I answer an unwanted call, take another trip, another girl. The longer I am gone the more likely it is she will have called when I get back.

This sickness has passed to the Boy, much more mild in his body, but the Girl watches him sleep to be sure. The thoughts in her head are matter unformed by language, but if you were to form them they would say something like : i never tire of you or eatingfish soup down bythewater i like watching your hair get lighter everyday, I hopeyourbodyworksso well that by the morning we can go swimming and then kiss. “I Love You So Much.” S