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Her hourglass figure assaults me at daybreak, curves so statuesque I think I wanna be her. First breath to the grinding scream of creation. Substances welded with fission and spark. I slam the window shut. My body hovers in the liminal space between weightlessness and cell death, new pain in sacred corners. I don’t feel sacred; I feel scared. Eye strain accumulates from screen time, apply eyeliner bloodshot, throw on heels red lipstick and toss back an escapist cocktail. I worry none of these memories matter. Who’s even keeping track? I am. I’m keeping meticulous thoughts in my Notes app, cataloguing who has what I want. Archivist observation. I could ask, but then I’d know the answer. Lindsay sautés vegetables; Hal gifts trout when I can’t eat. I pocket these acts, prepare for scarcity. Even if I peak, there’s still climate collapse. Are you taking your supplements? Are you going to bed early? Moving your body? Cherishing your youth? Are you present? Are you here now? Are you healing your inner child? Blocking out toxic energy? Are you manifesting? Saving money? Are you donating? Are you virtue signaling? Saving the world? Are you a good girl? At night I rebel, plead for more hours. Tomorrow is a new day! challenges my pessimist tendencies, so I hug my skin while it’s still warm. I lose track
Lindsay and I agree it’s accelerating.
The wheel of time, that is, inertia jump-sharking itself into sunset, I spend hours in a bright hole, when I come to, darkness has fallen; no, darkness has embedded itself. Sleep, a blink or hallucination. Wasn’t like this in youth. Five, six years old, dragging my spindly body across mahogany hardwood, noting grooves in each wood panel to pass time, shouting MOM WHEN WILL IT BE MY BIRTHDAY into the cornflower blue kitchen; see, I knew my birthday, but the ribbon unspooled expansive, agonizing. Time has swaddled me in fleece, a lullaby, an ambrosia, Lotus Hotel years flickering. In a decade I’ll rouse shocked by the daze come over me. Life contained within the blue light. I mean the blue dot. Flecks of joy sprinkle the sky (nights we think if we smash our bodies hard enough, they’ll fuse, and we can stop coordinating schedules) I try to catch them. I watch the whole of my life crack open as a crevasse,
beckoning
