The Same Story
An ekphrastic piece after “Standing” by Kiki Smith
The standing figure arches her back and stretches toward the sky. Water flowing from her fingers trails up her arms, past the crooks of her armpits, and over her bronzed ribs. The water traces a constellation across her chest.
Did you know that starfish have eyes at the ends of their arms? Did you know that starfish are not fish at all? Starfish do not have blood — instead, they circulate sea water through their veins.
The standing figure receives water through the bottoms of her feet. The water edges her ankles in a ring of salt.
Did you know that sea stars are part of the animal class called “Asteroidea?”
The deep sea finds itself in the sky.
The Virgo constellation is brightest in spring skies.
This constellation contains stars that contain planets,
contains galaxies and black holes, and something
called dust lanes.
Virgo is associated with the Roman goddess Ceres and the Greek goddess Persephone.
The stars piercing the flesh of her chest are of two mothers.
Tracks
tracing beetles on the bark
a tree topples — trunk touched
a subsequent death:
the breath of bugs
a cycle
life/death/life/death/
and life again
the tree lives
again
tracks trace veins
veins: the water in her fingers
arterial
material
beetles bit the bark
a deterioration, sap slipping
at an oozing pace
a chill crawling up your scalp
the breath of beetles on your bark
Tree trunk
tap me
tap me
call water up
before it gathers
between rocks
feel the ground of my bark beneath your feet
bask atop this shell
shell of myself
shell
seashell
see shell
There are fourteen stars pinned to her chest.
star
scar
chest
flesh
breath
And though her eyes are shut she can see
you
yet watches none
one
One night,
the figure climbs down from her place on top of the tree trunk to wander. Water slips from her fingertips and her arms remain outstretched at her sides.
She leaves two trails of water, each mirroring the other.
Her eyes are shut and she sees
none
no one
not one
but two
Trails of water follow her, mirroring each other.
She is standing so close to the deep-sea ceiling that she can draw Virgo’s stars from their pinhole places.
She picks and pulls at the nails in her chest
but they remain, the stars punctured through their mouths.
She walks down the middle of a winding road
and dips her whole self into the sea.
In the saltwater, she is able to pull the stars from their pins to hold them, one by one, in her hand. The star bodies dissolve into salt, shimmering as the tide pulls away.
In their place are fourteen new stars
stars of the sea
star
sea star
see star
seize stars
fourteen moons
fourteen days
waxing
waning
tide pulling
giving
flesh from flesh
bone from bone
giving life to flesh
and skin to bone
She navigates through the sand toward a rocky orifice, into which she steps with no hesitation.
As she falls, the stars on her chest glimmer and glow. Heat travels through the pins into her skin
and each pin clarifies itself as
pressure
pressuring points
pointing to points of pressure
a slow, fading prick across her skin.
She lands in a forest amongst hundreds of eucalyptus trees.
The pins on her chest pull away from her skin and magnetize toward a small pool of water. In the pool stands a tree, its roots exposed above the dirt. This tree, it seems, is dying.
Its leaves drip into the small pool, water droplets falling in sequence with each movement of each leaf.
The sound, to her, is familiar, and she steps closer to hear. The figure moves to stand in the pool, directly under the tree’s branches. This is what she hears:
The standing figure arches her back and stretches toward the sky. Water flowing from her fingers trails up her arms, past the crooks of her armpits and over her bronzed ribs. The water traces a constellation across her chest.
The standing figure receives water through the bottoms of her feet.
The water edges her ankles in a ring of salt.
The deep sea finds itself in the sky.
And though her eyes are shut she can see
you
yet watches none
one
It is the same story.
It is the same story.
She is standing in the story of herself,
and she has come here to hear the story.
It is the story of the tree, the sea star, the sky.
She is of the tree, and the sky, and the sea.
The stars detach from their pins and fall, one by one, into the pool of water.
