by Erica Hoffmeister
According to legend, a frog will not notice the temperature of water increased and will let you boil it to death without moving, without realizing at all what is happening.
According to science, the adage is a myth. Not only would the frog feel the water’s temperature rising, it would move with certain panic, try to escape the boil disintegrating its spindly legs into white, swirling membranes like hard-boiled eggs dropped recklessly into the pot, breaking shell. The body wants to jump out. It simply cannot.
A slow boil, legs intact, internal thermometer that reads the same, maybe one or two degrees warmer. It’s not that I don’t want to jump from the violent, hot bubbles scorching this new mother-flesh, melting it from my bones, liquefying the marrow from the inside-out. I simply cannot.
For reference: a scene in the film, Dante’s Peak. A spectacle of 90s blockbuster. I saw it for the first time at the drive-in theater as a kid, in that parking lot refuge my mom would bring us kids to watch movies any night of the week my dad got too drunk to be around. My younger siblings hid under our 1986 Suburban’s stained blue seats so that we’d only pay $10 total for two adult tickets: my mother, and me. Always a double feature. That night, we unhitched the back bench seat from that old, rusted white truck that growled embarrassingly during after-school pickups, sat with the speakers pulled from the post to our ears, and listened to the volcano rage.
The opening hot springs scene featured two teenagers skinny-dipped and daring, living some life I imagined would be mine one day as I watched from that smelly old bench-seat that sagged in the middle and smelled like the smokers who owned the truck before our parents, before my period came and bled the truths from movie screens and onto its upholstery. Testing my knowledge about intimacy, tension mounting, I felt just enough discomfort to bring the dented, loose drive-in speaker farther away from my face, saying something like: “Hey, do you want another burrito?” to my brother, before anything could happen between the two bodies projected beneath electrical wires. The volcano tempered below them, magically slow-boiling the water in hyper-speed before a single kiss could be exchanged in front of my prepubescent eyes. Before my brother and I could meander to the snack shack, their bodies melted from within—neither could move, could jump from the boiling pot. Only bones and blood-stained proteins dripping from mangled muscle were left when that actor who played James Bond found what was left of their remains. But as everything, this is also an instance of myth, legend, untruth. They could have jumped out. They should have died from breathing in poison acid, instead. Their bodies would have never actually boiled at all.
I ruminate on lobsters, how we think they cannot feel pain as we throw them into already-boiling water, when research has shown they most certainly can. Do they not deserve the frog’s seemingly humane slow boil? Do their eyes not melt like the lovers in the hot springs? Do they not feel every little fucking bubble explode across their backs, their tiny antennae, those spiny little feet? Is it worth the buttery white meat left inside the boiled-red carcass when it’s all said and done? Did it pain you to watch me die?
There was a time before all this, I think, when things were much easier than they seemed. When the water temperature was tepid, room-temp, that slightly cooled-off bathtub water: uncomfortable, but survivable. This is not the temperature of motherhood.
When I dip my toes in the bath that first moment, searing hot, magma-water, the blood in the tips of my toes retreat before I can acclimate, before growing to love it, like the blood in my chest. A faulty internal thermometer designed to keep my body safe from boiling water.
Slow boiled, it takes time. Measured in moments and weeks, the same routine bubbles over the turnover of a new day without notice. Things get harder, chaotic in its repetitiveness. My body is thrashing through the gurgling, simmering, splashing, drowning. By now, it feels normal. Tossed in a stainless steel pot. Like a skinny-dip in some secluded hot springs. A calm bath. And I’m not moving at all.
According to science, the adage is a myth. Not only would the frog feel the water’s temperature rising, it would move with certain panic, try to escape the boil disintegrating its spindly legs into white, swirling membranes like hard-boiled eggs dropped recklessly into the pot, breaking shell. The body wants to jump out. It simply cannot.
A slow boil, legs intact, internal thermometer that reads the same, maybe one or two degrees warmer. It’s not that I don’t want to jump from the violent, hot bubbles scorching this new mother-flesh, melting it from my bones, liquefying the marrow from the inside-out. I simply cannot.
For reference: a scene in the film, Dante’s Peak. A spectacle of 90s blockbuster. I saw it for the first time at the drive-in theater as a kid, in that parking lot refuge my mom would bring us kids to watch movies any night of the week my dad got too drunk to be around. My younger siblings hid under our 1986 Suburban’s stained blue seats so that we’d only pay $10 total for two adult tickets: my mother, and me. Always a double feature. That night, we unhitched the back bench seat from that old, rusted white truck that growled embarrassingly during after-school pickups, sat with the speakers pulled from the post to our ears, and listened to the volcano rage.
The opening hot springs scene featured two teenagers skinny-dipped and daring, living some life I imagined would be mine one day as I watched from that smelly old bench-seat that sagged in the middle and smelled like the smokers who owned the truck before our parents, before my period came and bled the truths from movie screens and onto its upholstery. Testing my knowledge about intimacy, tension mounting, I felt just enough discomfort to bring the dented, loose drive-in speaker farther away from my face, saying something like: “Hey, do you want another burrito?” to my brother, before anything could happen between the two bodies projected beneath electrical wires. The volcano tempered below them, magically slow-boiling the water in hyper-speed before a single kiss could be exchanged in front of my prepubescent eyes. Before my brother and I could meander to the snack shack, their bodies melted from within—neither could move, could jump from the boiling pot. Only bones and blood-stained proteins dripping from mangled muscle were left when that actor who played James Bond found what was left of their remains. But as everything, this is also an instance of myth, legend, untruth. They could have jumped out. They should have died from breathing in poison acid, instead. Their bodies would have never actually boiled at all.
I ruminate on lobsters, how we think they cannot feel pain as we throw them into already-boiling water, when research has shown they most certainly can. Do they not deserve the frog’s seemingly humane slow boil? Do their eyes not melt like the lovers in the hot springs? Do they not feel every little fucking bubble explode across their backs, their tiny antennae, those spiny little feet? Is it worth the buttery white meat left inside the boiled-red carcass when it’s all said and done? Did it pain you to watch me die?
There was a time before all this, I think, when things were much easier than they seemed. When the water temperature was tepid, room-temp, that slightly cooled-off bathtub water: uncomfortable, but survivable. This is not the temperature of motherhood.
When I dip my toes in the bath that first moment, searing hot, magma-water, the blood in the tips of my toes retreat before I can acclimate, before growing to love it, like the blood in my chest. A faulty internal thermometer designed to keep my body safe from boiling water.
Slow boiled, it takes time. Measured in moments and weeks, the same routine bubbles over the turnover of a new day without notice. Things get harder, chaotic in its repetitiveness. My body is thrashing through the gurgling, simmering, splashing, drowning. By now, it feels normal. Tossed in a stainless steel pot. Like a skinny-dip in some secluded hot springs. A calm bath. And I’m not moving at all.
Erica Hoffmeister was born and raised in the fragrant orange groves of Southern California and now lives in Denver where she teaches creative writing and rhetoric. A multi-genre writer, she is the author of three hybrid/poetry collections: Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019), Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and the forthcoming All the Parts You Haven’t Lost (ELJ Editions, 2024). She has been nominated thrice for Best of the Net and has earned several other finalist spots across genres, with a variety of short fiction, memoir, poetry, and critical essays published. She’s obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cross-country road trips, and her two wildling daughters, Scout and Lux. Learn more at: http://www.ericahoffmeister.com/.
Emerge Literary Journal 