I have a houseplant. His name is Thor. I wanted to spell it the Icelandic way—Þór—with that impossible little thorn, that jaunty laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative, but my boyfriend said it was too pretentious. He said medievalists have no business naming things, that we should make nothing new.
I’m Jörmungandr to my Thor (Þór, I think), the evil force that droughts it and chars it on the windowsill under an unsetting sun.
Thor won’t last the week.
.
Three months into my Fulbright and Iceland is still the slightly warped version of life one expects from a low-level nightmare. Our bread is normal but cooked by cask near hot spring. Women open their mouths and release the damp language of mermaids. The beer is brief and $15. The road is a circle, the sun a constant. We whisper to lamb with lamb breath.
.
I was a Victorianist, which killed our sex life. I studied trauma in literature and haven’t been in the mood since. One erotic page of illuminated manuscript led me to the bared genitals of the fabliaux. I felt a tingle.
To no avail. We are roommates who disappear each night behind our sleepmasks, and wake surprised that the other and world are still here.
.
What exactly is a moor? I think this scrambling through greened-over lava fields. Low-lying green, quiet, empty. Not even clustered pellets of sheep droppings. Fog sits thick as a hat.
It’s amazing what the mind finds once released from the Papar of western Iceland. I’ve forgotten to water Thor. I slip on a stone, brace, catch on my palms. Splayed, beating heart like a love-struck knight or maiden dwelling on the sensation of the horse between her legs. I lie down, stiffen, release. I am a tourist consenting to the loving-trick of an elf. I won’t include this in my report.
.
My boyfriend is asleep, having failed again to separate day from night. I go to the toilet. I stand. A quincunx of debris—lint, lava-moor sand—rests like stained glass on the water. Rose window signaling apocalypse, nothing to do with heath-and-wood Icelandic Christianity. More thoughts to keep hidden from the committee. No, I first saw something akin to the Icelandic sweater’s yoke. I belong.
It’s glitter swirling down the drain.
.
We pass more months, I pass more glitter. It is painless and beautiful, the glitter and our time here. I suspect he’s met someone in town; his trips to the library are frequent and return him flushed. I don’t mind. I feel full all the time. My belly even swells.
.
It does not belong to him. I carry it with me, even in search of the site where Njáll’s farm finally burned. The baby, I know, will have elvin ears entirely unlike those of my boyfriend. He will have lavafield eyes, a taste for small flowers. When he is born I will rinse the glitter and heath from his face, name him Þór.
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Iris Moulton lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Gigantic, The Literarian, and, more recently, her book Tofu of Kansas (Sensitive House).