#walkingandwriting

Do not set your watch by me as I am not a timepiece

Do not give your heart to me as I cannot promise love

Do not set your mind on me as I am not in control

Do not put your faith me as I cannot always deliver

I am a nettle. I am small and insignificant. I am alive.

Across the field, a siren—an echo of birds rolls wide just beyond the wall.

I am alive.

I am alive.

I am alive.

 And I am surrounded by brick—stone and mortar that crumbles into a red desert at the base. Painted mural repainted by winter and vine, repainted by the decay, by the collapse and the beating sun—beating heart, heavy breath against the cold; an illusion of smoke slips from between the lips. And my fingers are pressed between the cracks of a tree, between the vertebra of some sick ghost white and peeling that slivers it’s body up the wall—I am forced to remind myself that I am not this tree. That this is not my spine, though my own is bent too into an ‘s’ with one too many curves.

            I want to swallow the sound—hold the noise in my belly full. I want to imitate the birds and the soft whistle of dying grasses, open my mouth and breath out the path and the walk and the grind of the gravel beneath my feet. Feet that tangle themselves relentlessly in the tufts of toddler grasses that mess like human knots. 

            I wonder how long this life will last—earth separated into fractions by the colored grasses: white, green, brown; a perfect third. The cat-tails grow long and grey.

            And someday I will dream of this place, when my own skin has grown grey with winter. Dream of lands burnt brown and crisp, of the leaves that catch in the dipping bowls of trodden grasses—between the growth and the decay.

She lay there wheezing softly, embalmed by my bed sheets. We are going to die, she said. Tell me how I am to do that. Tell me—

A shadow stretches long from my window, dragged slowly across the room by some waking dawn. And I’m alive, but I lay still—feel the light envelop the room, swathed by some brooding creature rusted and yellow. And a shade crosses my lips as if to taste them, lips that could kiss—but only for a moment before she too is pushed along by the early bright; embarrassed by first blush. And no matter how still or how long I lay, the dream is done—driven out with the shadows. She is only a memory.

            Cowled in my clothes, it is raining. My shirt clings tight collaring my breast—as I inhale I feel the fabric pull taught against my expanding lungs; lately it has become harder and harder to breath.

The land here is dead—the bones of breathless creatures sprawled in the washes of rain, scattered between the middens of anonymous trash. Farmhouses in the fields scoured of their paint, wood sprung back and spooning like some fleshy decaying carcass; skin peels from bone, rippling off in ribbons red and rotten. My breath is smoking against the cold, ironic. And I want a cigarette, but it’s been weeks. And even if I were to break that promise, it’s pouring and wet cigarettes aren’t worth much. So I’ll breath against the chill and watch the howling clouds of cold that come from between my lips and pretend they’re ashen plumes of nicotine nightmares that I so deeply wish to dream again.

I am not attached to a dead weight, but I myself am heavy.

My feet drag forward against the grain, wet grasses wrapping my ankles like some poorly done present. And beyond the field there is a haze, some sullen mist that cloaks the edge of the earth in a dimness today, too dreary. What lies beyond the mist? Beyond the dark jungle of used-to-be homes, decaying and tilting with the wind—what becomes? To not lose heart in a place like this—where the road breaks beneath your feet and the noon sky grows black before four. Don’t lose heart.

This land is gullied and broken—the soft black talc breezes through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along the sea floor, cold and creeping, permeating the soles of my boots to spread to my skin to my muscle to my bloodstream until I myself am nothing but black ink; a new stain on this land, nothing more than a tarred gum-spot.

Long before I was here, there was life—before packs of dogs ran wild looking for the left behind, before weeds sprouted between the cracks of concrete unkempt, before when homes were homes with families full and lively and—and here, just here.

Something looms in the space between dream and day, some ungraspable thing—creature without face or form.

My hair has been plastered down to my cheeks, fixed tight like some close helmet. I stand in the downpour, how far have I come? Far away a faint rumble of thunder muffled in the dusk. I walk through the empty city; neighborhoods that have turned to meadows, concrete laid soft with grasses green, an abandoned complex of municipal buildings overgrown with wildflowers.

Abandoned, but not lifeless.

Heaving heavy breaths against the slope, heels slipping back with every step forward—as if earth became ocean and he was made to battle some rapid tide that pulled at his ankles. The grasses wrapped around his legs sinking him deeper and deeper into the wet earth, leaving bloody brown veins of mud up his calves. Feet enveloped by some sodden grain rubbing between big toe and little until fissures in the soft skin bled red and raw; God he was tired. But the cold drove him forth, bending knees that creaked and whistled with strides taken; memories of old shipyards and bottle rockets swept through his mind leaving behind notes of nostalgia bittersweet.

            Trembling like some snared fox, the man took breaths of a relentless cold that seemed to spit his way with his every step. A rash of rain spread wild and violent washing graveled earth over his feet, the man looked up. He had spent so much time calculating his footing that he hadn’t paid much mind to where his feet had taken him. At the edge of the wood on a ridge overlooking a pasture, he found the world bathed in a gray light—like some painter had washed over his work with blues and grays soft and sweeping. But shadows snaked from the trees behind him as a shivering yellow sun crept timid into a world of cool colors, contrasting the brush and purpose of the painter.

            A faint whooshing rustled the trees as rusted leaves wandered their way down to the forest floor, did he dare walk into the field? Off the path into the grassland green and growing, heels trudging over a florid and living open-wide. Snapping stems and shrub and weed and brush and bug beneath his feet; he, some solitary sentinel standing at attention at the edge of the wood, did he dare abandon post?

            He was afraid—afraid of so much more than an open field and a snapped stem and a pair of wet socks stuffed with loose gravel. But the rain had moved on, he watched the wind carry the storm over the mountains—that was where the storm broke; some foreign attack cracking and booming against that stark gray that appeared again and again out of the shrouded flares of lightening. So he must move on, he told himself. Beat against the current and the grain, pushed forward now by an emerging sun. His form swollen far before him, drawn long into some spoiled ribbon by the stemming light.

            How far can a shadow stretch across an open field? Dreams which he now loathed to wake from; was he birthed to watch arboreal ghosts seeking greener pastures? Chasing lost leaves—reaching out to lands just past the grasses? Like grey blue creatures spread too thin into stains on the earth, shadow men leashed and crawling with the day. Was he to crawl with them?

Light up my cigarette important. Because I don’t want to do this.

Walking on wobbly feet through foreign ground, grinning up chin dripping Clementine. Hands poking holes with fingers fat and pink through dusted dunes of red rock raw and rumbling over miles of a great open wide. I am trying to remember. Remember the divots of dirt impressed into the creases of balmy palms, remember the glint of a sun brighter than bright, remember the feet that carried me and the hands I held. I am trying to remember for what so long I have tried to forget.

Sunlight on a broken column—she walks. Holes of missing hippocampus stuffed tight by miles of earth collected in the tread of a left boot. Red rock—mudded fingers—raisin stuck between the teeth—T.S Elliot on the mind. She holds a hand up waiting for response, for the grip, for the flesh of fingers entwined into a waffled creature solid and secure. Layers of sediment build on her skin blue and red and burnt brown and she has become a rock; stagnant.

Scrape off the exterior to reveal skin beneath.

Pulled forward by her hand held she is high on the plateau in view of a Hoodoo. They have come from the pit—the stomach of a canyon wide, she has walked through the mouth and entangled her feet with the intestines of Bryce, leaving nothing but prints and a dropped photograph behind. This world has been bathed in red, rocks twist mortal like a broken neck unnatural. She is in Utah, but she does not know. The where was not important then—the details just fuzzy facts that sat in the buzzing background of a burrowed brain. It was not about the where. It was about the what—what was real and tangible and touchable.  

Crescent colored sky—the first rainbow. A virgin accident of a

misty day folds itself into the memory. Stringing together thoughts of years passed, years during, years before The Clear. Before caustic became calm, before sour tongues pressed dry began to salivate: To recapture a memory of a relentless child—I am not supposed to be here. I am not supposed to—

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

Sinking into my common room couch, surveying the disaster of what it means for me to write about my childhood; I need to breath. I don’t do this, and I want to replace don’t with won’t and won’t with can’t, but I can’t do that. It does not make sense to make sense of my seven-year-old mind. It does not make sense, words spit wired and fantastical nonsense like some misinterpret dream.

I do not have anything I want to say to you;

No—that is a lie.

I know how many steps it takes to get to the yellow fire hydrant by your house—toe touching heel in front, no gaps between feet as soles press to concrete. No gaps.

Maybe the scars on my knees aren’t really scars. Knees, ankles, arms, thighs, wrists, back. Maybe that cut crescent on my forehead is just a reminder, a memory of some far and floating recollection. Physical memories bear down on the skin—weighting the body until the muscles collapse and deteriorate.

Skin becomes earth again—

Skin becomes mineral becomes dirt becomes rock pressed deep.

She is rock.

She walks amongst her forebears, few grey trees stipple the burnt background.

Boulders stack into elevated angels of orange Hoodoos, leering over her head with arms outstretched into arches and towers tall. Palms press to rock—to the breast of some beating creature. Beating creature. Beating the odds back with bloody little fists curled closed and clutching a rock precious.

I had pet rocks as a kid.

Thought them funny, and cute.

Thought them friends.

Glued on dollar-store googly eyes, sat them on the mantle. I was allowed one from each trip. We weren’t there to destroy, or to take, Mom would say. But Dad would slip a rock in his pocket. Every time. Yellowstone, Red Wood, Grand Canyon, Pescadaro, you name it. But I took that rock from Bryce. It was the first thing I stole. I took it and I held it tight until it rubbed smooth around the edges. Until Bryce engrained himself into my palm permanent. Engrained physically, but still I cannot seem to remember—

 Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

 And then there is a flash and a whip and a memory of striking light hits the brain to illuminate the mountains. Fantastic shapes spin cadmium red veins through the cracks and the collapse and the fissures of mineral that drip down with the rain. And the thunder is deafening and she is afraid that the cabin might erode away with the rock. Bulging spires and narrow fins fan out from the plateau, and she is on a stage. Watching the storm kindle the hoodoos, arches lit bright by the hits of electricity. Some fantastic conductor—flicking fingers extend to wands against the black sky. Watching the orchestral erosion of millions of years like a time lapse, creating deep slot canyons for some planet foreign.

For surely this is not our earth—fissures deep contracting into some hearth unknown. 

For surely this is not our earth—

            For surely—

            For surely this is not—