She is 76 when her body declares war on itself. She affectionately calls her mind
a minefield in an email to her child’s child, typed under the attachment: a selfie of
her smile half-obscured by a thumb.
She’s heard on the radio that it’s important to read books with titles like The Art Of,
Considering, Meditation on, A Philosophy Of. The disembodied voice is saying that
these books have been popular lately in the face of all that’s going on…
you know… politically. She adds them to her list.
But there are men with their AK’s cocked in her living room. Behind the sofa,
on crouched knees in the radiator barracks. She’s not the general, and she can’t
command her army anymore, so she’s hiding in the kitchen. She’s built up a city
of pots and pans to protect her body, because isn’t silverware a weapon? Do we not
wield our forks in one last attempt to reconcile our bodies?
She’s moving soon, out of her body into the land. She’s voting no to rezoning
her mind map. She doesn’t think she could handle the reorganization, years have
passed and her brain cabinet is crammed with clutter.
She has fears of what gaps it would expose.
She’s become the butt of her own joke. On the last visitation she confused her niece
with her daughter. She hopes to clarify that she didn’t actually think her niece was her
daughter. They bear on their faces each of their different short-loves. She wants to
explain that they got tangled in the topographic lines of her brain-map. Time just escaped
her for a moment. But she’s back on track, she’s just skidded past time kicking up dust
in her wake.
The other day the preacher in the Pay Less parking lot admitted he was a preacher.
He said I’m preaching to you because my God told me to. She said my god I forgot
the ginger and turned right back around.
Lately, she’s taken to rain swallowing. It was recommended by the physician to drink more
water. So she waits outside in thunderstorms and she is now a small god reconstructing
her supple skin from the sky-tears. She recycles this recommendation to the club of ailing people
she knows, with each calendar flip that number has only been climbing.
IN THE PAY LESS
[…] : It’s been so long! How are you? How’s […]?
Rain-swallower: Have you tried rainwater? It’s like liquid gold.
Her son visits.
He says he’s there to fix the roof, he explains that after all these
years collecting sky grief, the weight of the waterlogged shingles has begun to crush
the bones of the house.
He jokes she’s lucky she doesn’t have to call a carpenter,
She can no longer walk on her own, she tells him he could
have been a doctor.
She forgets the mail and the mailslot swells pregnant with junk.
As the house bears down on her body,
she washes her weapons waiting for war.
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