Thawing Time

If the house starts listing sideways I’m sure it’s the permafrost melting. Let the eggs migrate south on the pan, roll apples on the floor until they turn soft. The roads slump and curve. I never sleep over the border of one day to another, to be sure I won’t miss anything. The lakes will be twice their normal size by the turn of the century. In Siberia there was a massive die-off of reindeer, and seventy-something people fell sick because of anthrax spores from the thawing corpses of long-dead, once-infected reindeer. It was too cold to dig deep graves back when they fell. Maybe we will catch a disease from a Neanderthal, I tell my father on the phone.

I am building ammonites out of clay in the backyard to see if I can fool scientists into geological error. Say: I am 5,300 years old and my tattoos have been perfectly preserved by the cold. I have been in love at least 18 times and my last meal was bread and honey. I am certain they will be convinced.

If the house becomes a ramp it’s because it has long been trying to rid itself of me. I am antique; the house will have decided me obsolete but still worthy of revenge. I will cling to the bed frame, dig my finger into the wood like an embrace. As a last resort, I will apologize, but only once.

Cora Kircher is a Vermont / upstate New York-based writer and aspiring academic (ish). She loves fossils, the ocean, and plants.