When an Ouroboros is Needed
A tale told in an almost poetic form
There are things I want my older self to tell my younger self before my younger self becomes my older self. I pass each day wondering how she managed, this small girl. The pale skin. How it kept out the monsters that wanted to crawl inside — how it encased her tender parts, giving them space to breathe.
I hold the image of her just under my skin, now sagging and not quite crepe-like yet, but on its way, so she can meet me, learn to trust me. Feel my heart, its perilous rhythm, calling her name with each who-whomp. So like her own, but more rushed — less steady, because time grows short for this little tryst.
I feel her settle finally into the small space between my stomach and lungs, the same place my daughters occupied as birth grew near—the place I still feel that reflux now. She folds herself into an origami crane and waits. I settle with her, offer a small snack — bread with salt rolled into a ball. Both hard and soft, its texture, a comfort in a fearful mouth.
I feel her aloneness — how her desire to live outweighed the weights others placed on her arms and legs, one disk at a time. How each morning she would wake and smoke that stick — wedding the smoke of her dreams with the mist of her morning.
