There are things trembling in the grass, the world is waiting with bated breath. It’s creation myth removed from its mythos-it’s your teeth pulling apart the atom. Nuclear fission, origin story: your mouth.
But this is the end of the story, not the beginning. This is what is told after the fact: in the After—that moment in the future which is defined by the present. Things are made to be rebuilt, tear it down then remake it all the same, just slightly shifted to the left. In the present, there is me. Toes curling into the trembling grass, swaying like a nose before it’s broken.
The sun spills out from your teeth the first time we meet, I wondered what it would feel like on my shoulders, I imagine(d) the soft flesh would sing. I’d never stop wanting to find out. The second time we meet, you bend down to grab a ladybug out of the cool blades of grass and press(ed) it behind my ears. The soft beating of its wings beneath the thin of my skull stays with me for a while. I wonder if it made me lucky, makes me lucky like a penny. The third time we meet, there is something flickering in your form, like the long swoop of a reed before its spine bends towards the water. Total immersion: a mirage of the self, fragmented through the water. You took me to the lake the third time that we met. You clutched in your smooth palms a handful of pennies, and we took turns tossing them into the water, exclaiming with delight each time the water rippled outwards—concentric circles futilely reaching horizontally. Mirages are easier to step on that way. The second time that we met, I ate four almonds—one for each of the gray strands prematurely appearing in your hair—and drank a cup of ginger tea-prepped for digestion. You snatch a ladybug from the ground, wrapping its slender body between your long fingers as it thrashed futilely against the cage of flesh. When you thrust it upon my ear always making sure it’s our burden, never just yours—I couldn’t help laughing as it pushed itself off to freedom; journey: the gap between my ear and scalp, up and outwards, to the great unknown. My lucky girl, creating freedom in the twists and bends of your fingers
My force of nature, the first time we met, the sun slunk out from your teeth, restless to roam unbound. It filled up the sky and its ferocity settled on my shoulders. In the After: there is you. There you are. Your teeth tumbling out and reborn again as blades of grass and the long greys of your hairs plucked and turned horizontal becoming the heavy clouds that pull water towards the horizon, brimming with the weight of secrets untold. In the After, there is the warmth of my shoulders, the grass they shudder into.
Mythos of creation, intrinsically known but held apart from origin: forces nature in indefinite collision.▲
