The Skin

The skin on this hand is so new, it is relearning the surface of things. With my right hand I brush over my face to feel soft cotton. With the new hand, the ridges, the new nerves, explore the unrefined aspects of the terrain, it inspects (harshly) the small bumps without the care one would put into a priceless object.

Yes, this skin is strict. In it's newness it will edcuate itself without stop, surprising me at odd moments, like a child discovering the world.

Wet, lashed, bright, flurries of answers float down from the black sky.
"Do you have a secret?" she asked him. Her breath was visible in the night.
"Do you have an answer?" he shot back to her quickly.

There was a pause in the time. It simmered, out of season. The hairs rose on the edge of their becoming.
He was quick to catch her when she started to fall. The wildfire caught her hair, singed the edge of his sweater, but, it was too late. They were lost already in the heat of the storm, they were locked in with no escape. She brushed the flakes off of her shirt and held his hand.

"There are no answers."
"There are no secrets."

The Century

It was the end of the century. There were no roads in sight, each one peeled up and off the earth like tape. Each one rolled up like a ball and tossed into the corner. Except, there weren't any corners, so they lay like huge boulders strewn about, oozing the spilled blood of a thousand years worth of machines, oozing the liquid marrow of the dinosaurs. In between the boulders lay the cities, shrunken down to small patches of mushrooms. Above were the eagles, their silver feathers like sharp knives cutting at the brown sky. Inside, we were all mothers holding on to something lost, like lace on the edge of an ancient dress. Our hair filled the rooms, golden waterfalls, brunette streams, black rivers, red kelp. We were submerged, surrounded. Under the water we could speak freely in the lost tongue. The men held their bellies and timed their heartbeats. The women chewed slowly on the roots of the Aarak tree, mending their cuts with watercress milk fresh from the animals. The centuries had piled so high, the edges of the mountains were hard to see, though, at this time, most of them were flattened, except for a small cluster located 23 kilometers north.

The Kiss

This morning there was an unusual knock at my door. It was the kind of happy melodic knock, the good mood knock, the about to have fun knock. It was around 6am and I was still in my weekend birthday clothes ( jacket, scarf, smudged mascara, bruised legs).

I thought about ignorning it. But, after the second round, I decided to inspect this unusual arrival. The morning was grey and cars were on their Monday work parade. It was alive all around in mystic grey fog.

When I peered through the peephole, I saw a happy man. He must have heard my floorboards creak, because as I looked through the tiny window at his bulbous face, he kissed it. He kissed the air in front of the door eye. He smiled and danced (slightly). On the ground were black belongings: a helmet and a few bags. He was dressed all in black.

I laughed.

I slowly opened to door to watch his face move in suprise and slight embarassment. Wrong floor, your darling lives above me: the girl with the snakes around her neck, good skin, white cowboy boots, and a bright smile.

The Cells

The ocean has been violently loud these past few nights. The air has been heavy with salt and tough skins of fish. The wildfires are ravenous, purple plumes drape the bony vertebrae: the soft fleshy fur crumbles in the hot wind skirt of the dance. The ground beneath seems like its trembling. At night the waves are louder, the sound of hard wind blowing through hard trees. There is a battle pulling the skin of the earth taut and tart.

Does anyone smell the air and hear the waves, or is the change local, internal?

There is dirt beneath these nails, a calm, settling, age, cells: division, growth. The waves are so loud they sound like thunder.

The Infant

I did a fast and this is what happened: my body and I finally became separate entities.

This has always been a known fact.

I broke my hand before the fast. First, my hand became my child. Then the rest of my body followed suit.

When you start to look at the world around you as a child, your life turns into something else: liquid, gas, light. Now, I'm just hovering around, trying to nurture, converse, cradle deep in my wet eyes everything I encounter.

I'm slipping out of my bones, body folding like a thick blanket to the floor. I gather the folds, the warm skin, the loose fingers, and carry them to the bed. There is a warm light spilling from the lamp in the corner of the room.

The Daughter

My mother came and filled my home with Home. She filled the drafty corners, the uneven floorboards, and the spaces between the cabinets. She made it smell like warm curry, fresh baths, coffee and tea. She brought home rum raisin ice cream and hummed in the kitchen. She washed my back and brushed my hair and laughed; her tiny body curling up into wrinkles, her tiny bones full of joy.

In the waiting room at the hospital we laughed at her bottom dentures. She pulled them up to look like vampire teeth. When she took off her top dentures to reveal her only two teeth, caving in her face, expecting me to laugh (like my brother would), I cried so hard it swelled like laughter. The tears would not stop. The doctors thought it was pain. My beautiful, radiant mother: toothless and aged. Her youth did not match her body; every year I could see my grandmother in her face. Every year her grey spread like a lions mane.

I showed her off. I photographed her daily. I recorded her banter. I was completely in love with my mother, she was all mine for the first time, and every moment I wanted to savor. I wanted to preserve her youth before she boarded the plane and pierced the sky.