Post by Linden on Apr 12, 2021 20:00:38 GMT -8
none of this is outside the body if the body does not end at the skin.
Tessa Micaela Landreau-Grasmuck, There are Boxes and There is Wanting
They keep meticulous notes; flowers, phonecalls, food, money, cards, the little creature comforts. Every gesture is a mark on the wall, a tally of care expressed that must be accepted and returned; accept or be ungrateful, return or have hoarded those small precious moments where no one else can touch them. Be grateful, be ashamed- left in the in-between, the space where you know what to say and do and when to smile but he’s always just a half-blink off your mind-
his smile bright goading his friend to jump first
(the pool, like the pupil of his own eye)
its hard but not harmful
testing the ground before his own feet fell
(they have no idea how it happened
but they can imagine shrapnel
tearing through meat muscle bone
shock and a moment too quick to contain)
Gods are immutable beings
fixed points in their own stories
This wasn’t right, someone rewrote the end.
They bathe in the dark. The burns are another layer in their lattice of scars and dead skin in the bottom of the tub. They understand the breakdown and renewal but it’s still the most true when they feel their edges in the dark where their eyes can’t betray them and it's just the knowledge of where the body starts and ends: the humble, horrific limitations. It’s easier to love themself in the dark but by the end they will turn the lights on and look into their own face, seated by the mirror. There is so much evidence here in the lines and creases and they will see it, the whole of them is a well and if they can look hard enough they will see the bottom.
what is the story
what can you look forward to
the body of a friend pressed to your back
the intimate understanding of fragility that leads you
to cup the back of their head, gently
supporting their neck like a newborn
fingers knotting in the hair at their nape to pull
and hold, like the soul is tethered to the exact point
where skull meets spine
the best we could do
It’s still the best they can do, standing in the kitchen with the skin of the chicken carcass greasing their hands, metal fingers hooked hard into the flesh. There’s a right way to take these things apart: joints to bend back until they pop, tendons to slice, guts to rinse into the sink. And the right way is noise, a static buzz that tries to drown out the anger, recriminations and the curling wave of grief. It’s easier to flex their grip, knuckles splitting like dry paper, and rip the bird into jagged halves. There’s no space for the clean or the methodical. Whatever works is good enough.
Set post-Skinwalker plot