Those years raising children fell down the memory hole, lodged in the brick and mortar of time like little fossils some future archaeologist might discover centuries from now when this verdant prairie is a wind-swept desert and the stranger finds himself wandering its face in search of clues. He’s wearing a thawb, emerald green, that slaps against his calves, a kufia over his mouth, squinting eyes. He stumbles on that hole of mine, where time and sand have eroded the vessel into which I dropped all I cared. It will have risen from the earth, scrubbed, exposed, and peculiar, when curiosity grabs him by the nape. He’ll pause to appraise the relic catching light refracting from the flat edge of a gem buried in chinking, and with one dirty fingernail he’ll chip, intent on uncovering its wholeness except it’s bigger than he’d anticipated and soon he’s using rocks with flint edges to scrape until the craft begins to collapse. Still, he’ll dig. At long last, remains in a heap, he holds in his hand, a kind of stone or jewel or bone, glowing with what was me, before the ship sailed, before it ran aground, before I leapt from its bow and sank into the open maw of casually passing whale.
I’ve told the tale about the time
my hands tore off in a windstorm, below me
nothing but sky, the children scattered
pebbles over a frozen lake. I’m the cottage crone
and the wolf stalking shadow paths in search
of small prey. It’s my job to bear the lantern
up ahead but not too far. Time and again I turn
around to no one. They’ve taken time to stoop
in wonder at the iridescent armour of shiny beetles,
pluck tender petals from some fluorescent bloom.
By the time they look up again, the path has closed
behind me. Go back or forge ahead? Does anyone
listen anymore? Really listen in that way that divines
hieroglyphs from the walls of my mind? I keep trying
though the effort seems futile. What else is there to do
but keep digging the story from the loam of the forest floor?
I am a bathtub full of grub-eaten weeds, Swiss-cheese
leaves spilling dappled light in the dirt, cathedral
ceiling of clouds, wall of green stalking the perimeter
of dreams. I am a cup full of hummingbirds, apple
cart upset, bruised flesh oozing tender nectar
that only happens by being pulverized. I am
a thumb breaking through skin, honey bee
swarming the face of abundance, delighted dance
of storytelling, way-making. if you ask me how
I got here I couldn’t say exactly, only that here
is a stopover to somewhere else I’ll know when
I see it, a shining shack on a hill, a tire rut, lantern
glowing in the mud, timid flame a flickering finger
beckoning this way, not that.
illumination will commence in 3, 2
once blinking lights melt into Friday
& nuthatches perch catty-wompus
on the peanut cage, I’ll go haywire.
The economics of porchlights pool
only so far, boundaries abound.
Winter’s vice clamps cold against
the cushioned air. It’s always time
to begin again. December sun
whimpers a low murmur only birds
can hear. The barbarian in me
bristles at this injustice, a full arena.
How am I to come this far
to only come this far? The end is dead,
all signs point its way.
by Cyn Kitchen
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