I had a Northern Body

by Sai Liuko

It broke out in hives every spring in places that I'd keep wrapped up to keep the world out: ankles and necks itched and longed for wooly hibernation in the crook of a cave.

I want to suck on pine needles, it said. It never failed to make out the Big Dipper. It never failed to be the big sipper, downing vodka and beer. I had to trick it into champagne. Then I had to trick it out of it.

When I arrived for my exchange year at the Equator, it went haywire. The Singapore sun made its skin bubble, its brain woozy, and yet it refused to pay for the room with the AC. I got tangled up in the dorm sheets and watched the ceiling fan.

Of course we all burnt our shoulders at the beach. Summer all day, every day like a smorgasbord of hopeful thoughts.

I was suddenly an XL, legs stumpy and muscular. Short legs built to preserve heat, I learnt later. After three months, my body craved for cold undercurrents. May, June, July, it counted, it's time to cool down, it said. Three months of this is enough.

It’s only March, I said.

It took a while to get so cozy that at nights I put on my fuzzy socks. And still, some invisible tree released pollen unbeknownst to my body. You are allergic, said the nurse. I couldn't believe that this environment had found a new way to reject me. The antihistamines worked, but it was Hongkong that destroyed me.

Hongkong was a mistake because Hongkong in the springtime is like home. I put on a jacket and never got used to the heat again.

When I came back on the second of May, it was snowing in Helsinki, but still not enough. I flew further north and climbed a mountain and the gray of my eyes grew deeper and piercing. Tromsø was a harshness my body knew. Between the mountains there was a valley with snowbanks the size of me. I had to stop the car and touch it.

The night wasn't nightless yet, technically, but close enough. It was a salty haze, forever clinging to my curtains. My body hummed along:

made for mountains. Made for sleet. Made for snow. Itchy Mays. Reluctant to sun. Storing heat. But when I give it lychee and coconut water, it curls up on itself, bloody and soft like the memory itself.