Kimberly Ramos
Image by Ryan Campell
IG: @raysbyryan
Kimberly Ramos is an undergraduate of philosophy and creative writing at Truman State University. Her work has appeared in Watershed Review, Underground, The Lindenwood Review, and Jet Fuel Review, among others. She was recently nominated for inclusion in Best Microfiction Anthology 2021.
Consider the Salmon
the salmon leaves the ocean / for the place upstream / where it came into being / this is called /
chemical memory / this is baked / in the bones / all this to die shortly after spawning / so
consider: / i throw myself up waterfalls / without fully knowing why / scales spitting / light like
prisms / the whole body arced and airborne / i’m pulled to places / i dream-remember / swept up
into mouths / that feel familiar / when the salmon dies / it’s a form of politeness / making room
for more mouths / more decay / a rock growing ever smoother beneath / burgeoning tides /
nothing to hold on to / i want to obliterate every egg / before it can lust after freshwater / to break
a circle, you must eat it / monstrous / but necessary / but imagine / all the beauty i lose / in loving
nothing / rainbowed scales / thick and fast in a moving river / the cold gasp / of my body against
a current / closer and closer / to that first love
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