• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

If You Were the Ice by Jacob Doyle

October 1, 2012 Contributed By: Jacob Doyle

If you were the ice you would likely wish it were summer, when you weren’t frozen and being sliced into or shaven. If you were the ice you would be bumpy and covered with a thin layer of snow that fell overnight. If you were the ice you would have the best view. You would see the tall, naked trees from an angle that made them look as if they skimmed the clouds. You would see the undersides of pine trees where the squirrels dig for nuts. You would see the sun, and from this angle it would illuminate in all directions rather than one. You would see our cheap spotlights surrounding the border of your brittle self. You might even feel the heat from their bulbs hit you when it was dark out. You would see the bottoms of birds, some so large they would remind you of Jesus. You would see the moon as large as yourself. You would see stars too, of course, more than the human eye could. If you were the ice you would feel our finely sharpened blades become duller by the day. You would feel our freshly taped sticks—some taped white, some black—become scragglier by the day. You would feel our knees and elbows strike you, but it wouldn’t hurt you at all. Occasionally, you would feel our heads or noses strike you, too. You would feel our sweaty, stinky gloves fall onto you then push back off. Every second, you would feel the rubber puck slide against your rough body, sometimes bouncing, sometimes tumbling. If you were the ice, you would see our worn-out jerseys—none of them matching. You would see our eyes water from slicing through the cold air, our noses leaking snot, our bright red cheeks, sometimes featuring a fresh cut. You would see the laughs and you would see the smiling.

But when Andy Potter, my closest friend, stopped us from beginning our fourth game of the afternoon by saying, “I need to tell you guys something, before it’s just too late,” and we all gathered around him, curious faces, as he stood there with his eyes closed, slouched atop his ice skates, leaning against his beat-up stick, and took a deep breath and told us, “I have leukemia,” you wouldn’t feel anything, if you were the ice. You wouldn’t feel our silence or our tears freezing against our cheeks. But you would know why after ten minutes we went back to playing pond hockey for the rest of the day.

Return to table of contents for Issue 6 Fall 2012

Filed Under: Fiction Posted On: October 1, 2012

Further Reading

The Neighbors Talk About Our Adoption
by Joseph Mills

i. The Old Woman on the Right She says that we’ve done a good thing that our daughter is lucky, and we’ll be blessed, and I want to say, Fuck you, you racist old bat. I want to say, Aren’t you afraid about the nigger music that will come from our house now? After all, […]

It’s All Feel, My Dear by Glenn Brady

Return to table of contents for Issue 7 Summer 2013

Barbara Schwartz & Krista J.H. Leahy’s Nothing but Light
by Emilee Kinney

Barbara Schwartz and Krista J.H. Leahy’s collaborative collection Nothing But Light is a spiritual journey that merges the female body with divinity.

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • Inside the Kaleidoscope
    by Jane O. Wayne
  • Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
    translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
  • I Hope Your Birthday Is So Beautiful, It Hurts to Look at It
    by Josette Akresh-Gonzales

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • Sellouts 1970: Love Story: The Year a Screenplay-Turned-Novel Almost Broke the National Book Award
    by Kirk Sever
  • I Hope Your Birthday Is So Beautiful, It Hurts to Look at It
    by Josette Akresh-Gonzales
  • George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
    by Brianna Di Monda
  • On The Member of the Wedding (and its adaptations) Seventy-Five Years Later
    by Jennifer L. Gauthier
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.