The marble & the fly

Nicole Callihan

The doctor instructed me to carry a marble in my belly button, and so I do. I found it at a little museum on O Street in DC, after having, perhaps regrettably, been supplementing with a rose quartz stone that, just before the pandemic, I purchased from a psychic on Manhattan’s 47th Street to help heal my cracked aura. The marble is clear and held in place with two criss-crossed bandaids. The body grows less and less recognizable, or at least, less visibly correlated with the mind. Now in Brooklyn, there’s a fly in my popcorn, and popcorn in my lap, and in my lap, the faint pressure of a lover’s head, how I might be running my hand across the mouth, in the hair, but, no, my fingers are on this keyboard, and when not trying to kill the fly, I’m trying to say what could be said if it could be said. Like walking through an unfamiliar city in search of a crystal doorknob. Twice, I’ve had the urge, when talking to someone, to take their fingers and put them to my marble, to say, feel what I am carrying. Each time, the person flinched and pulled their hand away. What if they hadn’t? What if we could touch each other’s discomfort, hold it, not retreat so quickly into ourselves? When I said, I’m not a jealous person, I only meant, I don’t mind being jealous. Most things I don’t mind being. Even afraid. These days, I cry more than I used to. I’ll be driving on the highway, and my face will be wet. Or I’ll finally get the fly--its thin legs, translucent wings, little black body—and staring down at the flyswatter, I become completely undone. 

Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Thrush, Tin House, BOMB, Court Green, Conduit, and as a Poem-a-Day feature from the Academy of American Poets. She has a novella, The Couples, as well as several collections of poetry, most recently, ELSEWHERE, a collaboration with Zoë Ryder White, which won the Sixth Finch Chapbook Prize and was published in spring 2020. Learn more at www.nicolecallihan.com.