#springironwritings

Butterfly-wings tacked to the wall despite their delicacy.  We grind clementine seeds under our tongues, though the Museum  chides us for chewing.

We are cold inside of painted lines. So we stand there in hats and gloves, fresh from summer heat reflecting off The school bus as it stalls in the lot.

Meditation in glances, our cruel art  echoes and we are pushing and shoving to see the remains of the well-known artist.

Our teacher remembers Paris.

Next day, we are bussed to the natural preserves. Hooting in ciphers, the stuffed owls taunt butterflies.

I wonder if you were igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. It’s hard to tell now, after so long. After I’ve forgotten my pause.  My father was always better at categorizing than me. It was his passion. His neat boxes of types and classifications. For my childhood and part of adulthood I liked those things too. I liked to wash my hands a lot. I liked to agree with my mother.

You were igneous because you came from an explosion. You were the earth spitting its insides out in red heat. You were the creeping flow ceasing so many in times both ancient and modern. You were flexible and full of movement, but then you were hardened and still. When you saw the light of day you dried and had the potential of dust.

You were sedimentary because I could never know your whole. You did not shatter into fragments when dropped; rather you had always been formed in ill-fitting pieces. Different parts you had collected as a sick sort of game. Picking up and dropping some as you came, as you went. You were from the desert. You were dehydrated sand. Thick parts of you gone in evaporation, leaving only your thins. You were made from my teeth, my bones. A build-up of calcium you stole from me.

You were metamorphic because when you brought yourself to Tennessee, you changed. You were handsome and then you were beautiful, which sounds the same, but sometimes beauty is classified by what isn’t.  You lacked balance in The Nations. You loved us both so quickly. You should have loved only me. You should have been able to choose. We were so different.

I’m ashamed.

You were metamorphic because I wanted to bury you, to change you back, to deny how pressure and temperature had made you rough. You said you were moving to restore your equilibrium, but you snorted white lines of another kind of rock, neither igneous nor sedimentary nor metamorphic. You were high as you spoke, which meant you were lying.

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Copyright 2013 By Rebecca Bell-Gurwitz (aka SpringIronWritings) on Tumblr