Ice and Islands

Freja

He says there´s a cabin by the water. I could come for the summer, or the spring. We could paint our faces, find the old gods, disappear into the trees. I know he´s not saying stay

forever, but it’s Iceland. People who stay in one place too long make me uneasy. They so often demand so much, make a territory out of the body, put up flags, build a fort,

kill the natives. He´s a European, and worse yet, an islander. His old blood tells him with every beat, stay put stay put. He´s a fish

who returns to the place he was born to die. But I´m not a fish,

it´s too early to tell him that I don´t want to watch him die, but I don´t. Yes, I want to run naked in the woods, skate on the frozen lakes, fall asleep

in the sun-drunk meadows. But that’s all. Please just let me

lay wild, unkempt, undone, overrun with weeds and meadow flowers, the chaotic thicket, the hum of crickets, the endless land the virgin forests the pure mountain springs.

Lillian Kwok is an MFA candidate at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently resides in Sweden. Her work has appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review, Silk Road, Border Crossing, and other journals.