Water Wings
by Meghan Bennett
I have a bad habit of writing love poems to you
in the bathroom, sitting on the counter waiting
for the water to heat in the shower. Maybe it’s just
I like the sound, although sometimes I get anxious
when the steam starts to cloud, when the fog
presses too close in my throat because I wonder
if I’ll suffocate here, wonder if my poeticism
will kill me, and I think a damp death
might be the most pathetic death of all,
if I were to drown in mid-air while the tub
waits scant inches away. I always say don’t compare
your tragedies: drowning in seven feet of water
is the same as drowning in seven inches. Close
the lid of the toilet when the baby is exploring.
Now, never buy a house without a window in the
bathroom. Unless you’re looking for a metaphor.
I’d walk around with water wings if
you wouldn’t guess why. I don’t know why
it’s easier to write you love poems while I’m here,
in these tiny mildewy rooms where the plastic curtain
wavers in an untraceable breeze; where, half
in my skin, I have to glance sideways at the mirror
every few minutes just to make sure no murderess
has appeared. I never saw Psycho, but I watched
most of Bates Motel. Because you know me:
the origin stories are the ones that always get me.
I need to follow it all back to the beginning,
like the well at the mouth of the pipe will have
the answers, the clues, all I need to be able to figure
where it’s all going. Hence the water wings.
I don’t want to die naked, wet, not quite drowned but
halfway, and yet these are the unfinished litanies
clogging up my notes app, that I’ll shroud in the bundle
of my clothes beside the sink so the screen doesn’t
overheat. So promise me. Once the water starts to puddle out
underneath the door and you shoulder it down and call
the fire department, if they find my body, if they find me
in the seven inches of chocolate syrup and the knife
in my own hands, if they find me, don’t tell them
the passcode to my phone. Don’t tell them why
the window is latched tight. Just tell them the
beginning. Tell them where you found me, first,
my hair soaked but my skin dry, neck-deep with my
eyes leaking under the pounding of the faucet.
Tell them I never wrote a single word about air.
Meghan Bennett is a poet originally from Illinois and a graduate of New York University, who found her way to Eau Claire, WI by throwing a dart at a map. She now teaches high school English. Her work has been featured in Rookie Magazine, ISU's Euphemism, and the 2025 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Calendar.
An Interview with Meghan Bennett
by Sophia Schmitz
“‘Cause you know me; the origin stories are the ones that get me.”
Meghan Bennett, a high school English teacher with a degree from NYU, ended up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin by a fluke. She was born and raised in Normal, Illinois, a town known for being located in the middle of a state that’s in the middle of the country. She left the interior for New York city as an eighteen-year-old. The culture shock prompted her to self-publish a book of poems during her time at NYU, which she describes as, “Very obvious that a teenager wrote this.” However, the simple act of recording such a raw period of poetry is beautiful and that’s reflected in the opening line of the book: “sometimes I think it’s the sound of the ocean growing.” Bennett further explained that each poem in the book is, “a drop of water in the ocean,” a gorgeous and introspective observation from her teenage self.
This outlook has not dissipated into Bennett’s adulthood. It certainly influenced her decision to join the Walt Disney World college program after graduating from NYU. Citing her uncertainty about her career and the desire to still explore, she made the decision to move to balmy Florida to work in a Disney theme park. Then Covid happened and the program stopped, leaving Bennett to figure out her situation fast. It was during this time Bennett submitted to and was published by Illinois State University. Prompted by restlessness and wanderlust, Bennett threw a dart at a map and hit “Eau Claire, Wisconsin,” which she described, “...as a good sign since Eau Claire means clear water and it also was the name of the street I grew up on.” All signs pointing to Wisconsin, Bennett left Iowa, the place she limbo-ed during Covid, and settled in the upper Midwest indie town of “clear water.” It was here, in this fluvial landscape, that Bennett began to revisit and refine her pandemic poetry, one of those being the piece “Water Wings”, featured in Barstow and Grand’s 2024 issue. Inspired partially by a “sucker punch line” and her grandma’s incessant worry that she would drown, which led to Bennett wearing water wings way past an appropriate age, the poem explores the “genesis of things.” Bennett remarks on the human inclination to give everything a prequel. This weird phenomenon aligns with Bennett’s curiosity, more articulately stated as, “‘Cause you know me; the origin stories are the ones that always get me.” Is it a coincidence that Bennett’s piece is the first in the Barstow and Grand 2024 issue? I don’t think so. “Water Wings” begins as an undefined love poem but quickly evolves, much like an origin story, into a critique on cyclical habits driven by instinct and fear.