“In-Between”
Book Excerpt: Aquakineticist
In-Between
Too big to simply carry to bed.
Too small to wake.
That nasty in-between
of adolescence where
even your parents don’t know
how to treat you anymore.
So they let you lie
half-awake in the
back seat of the car,
convinced you’ll
instinctively rise and
follow them inside
in a few minutes.
When you don’t,
they pretend not
to notice, call you
cute in your
absence, as if you
were still that
three-year-old toddler
tripping through their house —
not the stranger
asleep
in the back seat of the car.
Copyright © 2025 by Abby N. Lewis. Excerpted from Aquakineticist (Resource Publications). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Abby N. Lewis, a poet from Dandridge, Tennessee, is the author of the collection Reticent (2016) and two chapbooks. She holds several master’s degrees, and her creative work has appeared in over a dozen journals and magazines, most notably Timber. Keep up with her on her website, freeairforfish.com.
