past and future voltas. by E.B. Schnepp
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I wasn’t supposed to, but I fell in love with a woman who only knew how to make acorn tarts, had broken four teeth on the same, and I was what my father used to call a dandelion swallower, someone who stood wide in the fields with their mouths and eyes so open even seed pods couldn’t avoid capture. in those neglected daisy spaces I wanted to be alive so bad that when I was nine I climbed inside a body bag and waited for someone to pull me out, resurrect me; but no one came and after three hours in stagnant dark I grew bored and broke free of that starter-grave myself, narrow baby fingers digging into the zipper teeth. that may qualify as my fourth birth day, I have others; the day I was expected, the day I was due, and the day I finally decided to arrive, like all tragedies I came in a cluster of threes trailing a spiderweb caul. by 1982 traded it in for tasteful mesh and screaming along to billy idol on mtv, one thumb on the channel change button and one eye on the front door and everything was clandestine. clandestine like naomi getting drunk and kissing me and crying and staring at my fingers and staggered toes, she could read my family tree in them like reading cards or palms and I returned her to her husband, went home. curled into the slim space between refrigerator and counter, evicting cockroaches and let the vibrations of it sooth me into not-sleep. In the end it was the inanimate that first taught me how to breathe. |
