“Second Language”

The woman is alone, a silver mermaid in blue waves. She imagines a tail propelling her toward the language of whistles and clicks she learned as a child. She can no longer summon the meanings unless she is submerged, ears full of liquid. In her life on dry land, she wears ear plugs to shut out ambient sound in favor of the whistles and clicks she hopes will return.

When she was a child she spent all her time at the aquarium, fascinated by the dolphins spinning and flipping. At night she would sneak back onto the grounds and imitate the marine animals’ trainer, with his stack of Frisbees, hula hoops, and sticks. She fed them from a pail of mackerel and they understood one another. Once, a dolphin saved her from drowning. She can still feel the slick fins lassoing her, pulling her from danger toward the shore.

The woman gets out of the pool, vaguely surprised to see she has legs. She drives home, unnerved by horns honking and the shrieks of children playing, so the first thing she does is draw a bath. She fills it to the brim and eases into it, sinking deeper and deeper until she’s lying on the bottom of the tub. The water flows into her ears and fills her head. Her vision blurs. She begins to hear whistling. There are clicks.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and her Bombay Trilogy novels. Her work has been widely published and anthologized, including in Best of the Net. Most recently her word appeared in the Ilanot Review, Cafe Irreal, Roi Faingeant, Literary Yard, New World Writing and elsewhere. She was trained as a classical pianist and lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.