Confessions of a Snail Murderer


Kimberley Chia

Issue 1: RISE, July 2023


In our haste to catch the bus I step on a snail, its crevice collapsing in on
itself. A nomad murdered by a house it thought to be home. You laugh
sadly and say this must be a metaphor, for us. The statement hangs heavy
with ache. In the thick June air there are many words and never enough
said. But you recover quickly, as you always do: is this why you became
vegetarian? To atone for murderous slug sins?

••

I remember briefly all the reasons it took so long for us to leave. Our bodies like poles in the field of space, hands roaming—frantic for any place to rest save for each other. Between us, the snail starts to twitch, mucus claiming crannies. Shadows strobe feebly between shuffling feet, and something unfurls, swirling and violent, in my stomach. 

••

The year I resolved to love you no matter, scientists achieved the first successful memory transplant between snails. That is to say, perhaps we can will our bodies to misremember; to pull reminiscence, spindly and cruel, by the slimy tail from the roots of veins. That is to say: forgetting was a most arduous task. I did it, anyway.

••

At dinner, you offer a closure I no longer require. It squirms, tailless, on a coffee-marked tray. I hold my breath and swallow, anyway, let it simmer 24 acidic in our gullets. Tell myself this is your last hurrah, say nothing of the residual ache I am still icing. The food was going cold, and it was always easier to digest my own pride to satiate yours.

••

Later, I catch myself flinching from you when I cry. Suddenly, I am nineteen again—enamoured by extroversion, a puppy waiting for nonchalant bone. Did you know? Contrary to popular belief, snails don’t turn to slugs when their shells get destroyed. Instead, they dry out. Life leaves glutinous being a figment at a time. The table between us stretches light years before a startling realisation: my mind and body are no longer captive to yours.

••

The curdling remnant of snail begins to fossilise, shards forming a potpourri shield. I look at you, a shrinking fragment of my youth, and smile. I am ready to unlearn smallness. To pry its weight off my back and hold the gaze of death. To deflate relentlessly, into rebirth. Abandon every stool by the front door, bolts unknotting fists. Doorstop unwedged, pulled past the cracks in our floors.


Kimberley Chia is Singapore-born and Paris-based. Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Clare Market Review and Sine Theta Magazine, among others, and she has performed at various spoken word events in France. When not writing, she is exploring movement, working at an international organisation or cooking elaborate soups.