How to Dress a Fish. Abigail Chabitnoy

      “In appearance, Chabitnoy’s claims of being a full blooded Indian are fully substantiated.”

      Today I learned I’m biracial. or mixed racial. ambiguously ethnic. I read it in a book, but I don’t feel comfortable with any of these. Genocide elementary by comparison. Anybody can be outraged at a wrongful death. But wrongful living? I was comforted by the half white, half Mexican boy glowing beside me. Everyone wants to see ghosts, in theory.

       That is to say, I still don’t know how to fit this skin. I, too, am tall and well built and in summer possess a strikingly characteristic face. And if I only run a short distance, you can hardly tell the trouble with my back, the fragmented bone attached by gristle, or not, or floating just below the skin—

      Did you make yourself wind to make up your size? – How else is a fish accustomed to keeping its feet on the ground? – Why did you come back? Did you forget which way the wind blowed?

      “Among the many visitors here last Sunday was Michael Chabitnoy

      who is working at Hershey, Pa., for the summer.

      ‘Mike’ is also trying out for the Hershey baseball team.”

      Conduct: good

Why did you leave and then come back? Did you play with Jim Thorpe in school ‘Mike’? Did you eat pork and milk and green beans and butter? Did you live in the Athletes’ Quarters? Which tale are we in again Michael? Who gets to be of-the-water? Who gets to be people? above or below the sea –

       Isn’t a shark just a fish after all?

It was winter. I was sweating. You and I were in a boat, going back to Unalaska and my body went cold to spite my discomfort. You can be wind. You can be feathers. You can be fur or fin and teeth. I am not even earth. Not even bone. But permafrost in a warming state. Cold, not cold enough. Porous. Full of holes. Not filled but

      disappearing.