Life Before Life
Jeremy Griffin My son is the size of a lime, nestled in my wife’s bulging belly like a jewel in a fist. Surely there is more to be said about life before life. Surely everything worth light is also worth a blessing. My son is a koan, question and answer fused at the core like gravity-bound stars smothering each other back into gas and the dream of dust, his skin as translucent as the flotilla of dead jellyfish we came across on the beach the morning after the storm that sacked the slash pines, ravaged the dogwoods, their bodies confettied along the surf. I considered then how the world undresses itself, and how we can never bear to look. Love is a crooked thing, a song between breaths, a fine crack in our certitude. The ocean took the earth back into its chest, and I pressed my fingertips into my wife’s flesh where my son was unfurling like an outstretched hand waiting to be filled by whatever was left to give. |
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About the Author:
Jeremy Griffin in the author of two collections of short fiction--'A Last Resort for Desperate People,' from SFASU Press, and 'Oceanography,' forthcoming from Orison Books. His work has appeared in such journals as the Indiana Review, the Mid-American Review, and Shenandoah. He was the 2017 Prose Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission, and he teaches at Coastal Carolina University where he serves as advisory fiction editor of Waccamaw: a Journal of Contemporary Literature.
Jeremy Griffin in the author of two collections of short fiction--'A Last Resort for Desperate People,' from SFASU Press, and 'Oceanography,' forthcoming from Orison Books. His work has appeared in such journals as the Indiana Review, the Mid-American Review, and Shenandoah. He was the 2017 Prose Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission, and he teaches at Coastal Carolina University where he serves as advisory fiction editor of Waccamaw: a Journal of Contemporary Literature.