“In the Watershed of the Superfund Site” by Sophia Hammerle

In the Watershed of the Superfund Site

Chain-link fence and jet fuel in the ground:
growing up in a place like this,
nature, to me, was always corrupted,
always something to surrender to.

Love was like that, too,
a polluted creek in the hot sun,
a risk I let wash over me
with pleasure on the mind.

I realized I loved her in the summertime
down on the dried, cracked Texas dirt
where rocks cut our skin raw
on the banks of a brown bathwater creek.

The sun burned the promise of tan skin
as sweat crept down our backsides.
We stripped slowly, damp and weightless,
desire washed away in the waters of the creek.

I scratched my legs raw from mosquito bites
as our bodies cut circles in grass
carved by the lawnmower, leaving hives
on my back that she traced with her fingertips

later in a dark bathroom. Like an itch I was in love
with someone I could never touch.
We swam carelessly in the watershed of the superfund site
because no chemicals make you sicker than that kind of lust.

Sophia Hammerle

Sophia Hammerle is an emerging author based in Los Angeles. When not writing or creating, Sophia is probably eating a mango, thinking about trees, or feeding a stray cat. She studies narrative and gender at the University of Southern California.

Headshot : Sophia Hammerle

Photo Credit: Staff