Listing Price
An insurance check arrived for my
daughter’s life. Which began. Ended.
Began again because the doctor made a
mistake. Her breath stagnated by his hands.
A mile offshore in Lake Superior, an island
is for sale. The listing price equal to her
calculated mortality table, her projected
life. A pancake of earth covered in white
pines. No cliffs or chasms. Every day for a
year, I took off my clothes, swam limbs
numb. Nearly drowned. Gulping lungs of
pebbles, I pressed my belly into shoreline.
I tried to stay here. Dug, scooped the sand,
molded it to her infant shape. But I
couldn’t rally enough wood. Couldn’t keep
a fire. Couldn’t summon a single morsel to
eat. With only a handful of agates, I
plunged back into cold. Now on my
bedside table, a jar of rocks in water. I can’t
swim that distance again.
Regina Gort Betances is a retired chef who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She now lives in Puerto Rico, the island of her heritage. Find her work published in North Dakota Quarterly, Rova, Deep Wild Journal, The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, and The Dewdrop.