When my foot falls asleep I recall that
the body won’t evince itself or mist
its limbs with feeling more often, only
when it needs to tell me to get up and
move along. Last night a spindly old man
told me about the etymology
of a word, an insight so luminous
it made me stir and realize I must
have already known it in order to
dream that I learned it. But like Ishmael,
why say more? Leak awakens knowledge of
lack and now I’m staring at the drip from
the kitchen sink wondering if all the
oceans are peering down the spout, holding back.
— Lauren Dominguez Chan is a junior in Grace Hopper College.
