“Mishigami” by Ivy Qin

At the beginning of time, the Great Spirit Kitchi-Manitou floods the earth. A muskrat dives underwater and salvages a piece of the soil, placed on the turtle’s back to become North America. Land’s crown born into Mackinac Island.

The soil grows green. Kitchi-Manitou carves the copper-choked divots of the Great Lakes. Mishipeshu, the Underwater Panther, stirs the storms, the currents. In the tender turn of spring, a mother bear and her cubs swim across Lake Michigan. Her cubs are pulled under the high tide. Grief-stricken, Mother Bear lays to rest on the green shore. Her sleeping figure a dune.

In a birch-bark wigwam, an Anishinaabe boy listens to stories of the mother bear and the turtle under the great velvet dark. His people had followed the cowrie shells and a prophecy of fire to mishigami—the “large water.” Sleepless under the open sky. Skipping rocks on the shoreline. Their stories fingerprint the land. A touch that lives on.

The French follow the beaver trails to the forests and coastlines. A fur trapper washes down salted meat under dawn light breaking through pine branches. The forts become settlements. City jaws of smoke and iron. A factory worker whistles Stevie Wonder through the gritty Detroit streets. In Traverse City, spring hills run heavy with tart cherries. Mackinac Bridge cuts the early morning like gossamer thread.

All these pieces, you learn, fit in a puzzle of two hands. Right palm, where the heart and life lines cross like GPS highways; left hand a leaf from the sprout. Knee-deep in the sand shores of Lake Michigan, you cup them in the blue and listen for Mother Bear’s even breathing. The water is cool, and pure, and it reminds you of snow whistling in your ears on ski slopes. The winter shiver comes as a thrill. Mom says: “It’s the Michigan in you.”

It takes you back to the maps in your kindergarten classroom, the lakes tracing a blue keyhole over the left breast of North America. In time, there will be apple-orchard autumns and road trips North to the Pictured Rocks. There will be Motown museums and a toothy-grin picture at the Capitol. What you come to love most is the story that lives on.

But for now, your voice follows the thread of syllables from your teacher’s tongue.

Michigan.

She taps your hand. You are here. And smiles.

Ivy Qin is a student and writer from Michigan. Her work is forthcoming in Papershell Micropress. She enjoys taking long walks, poetry, and amateur photography.