Devon Balwit
Fast at Both Ends
It must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake.
—Herman Melville
Scoot your knees as far away from mine as you please; this
still won’t stop us from touching. Our situation
is almost as bad as the conjoined. Yank the rug out from one of
us, and the other falls. Poison your well, and mine
gives bitter water. No one was
thinking. No one considered what ifs. Now, the
man in front plummets, and each of us slides. The situation
couldn’t be direr. Of
course, we scrabble to undo the knots, but already we are unbalanced, every
second borrowed. Now do you feel mortal
terror? And what of our legacy? That
we must cobble together as we hurtle: the fate of everyone that breathes.
Devon Balwit‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Almagre Review, The Stillwater Review, The Tule Review, Red Earth Review, The Free State Review, and Eunoia Review. She writes and teaches in Portland.
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