How the Island Forms | Jesi Bender

An island is not an island without water. Without water, an island is just another hill. It only exists when everything else is gone. Drowned in its own amnion. An island only comes alive when everything else is under water.

Is it tragedy—where you happen to be when the rain comes?

When you stand on a new shore, the world is no longer a peak. The distance in front of you is a vast blue. Above and below, before and behind. Alight with the glory of an incomprehensible boundlessness, it is dotted with bodies, sprawling forever outward. They float like bloated memories, their mouths open to kiss the sky.

So? you ask yourself. So?, does the water or the island become its own formless grave? How
comfortable the abyss becomes, when padded by the quondam brine of the everdead.

Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate New York whose first book, The Book the Last Word, was published in spring, 2019 from Whisk(e)y Tit. Her shorter work has appeared in Split Lip, Lunch Ticket, and The Rumpus, among others.