sphallolalia
“Perhaps all romance is like that; not a contract between equal parties but an explosion of dreams and desires that can find no outlet in everyday life. Only a drama will do and while the fireworks last the sky is a different colour.”
my mother never wanted me around. that’s what it felt like, and a shard of the broken relationship sticks in my kidney. processors of toxins. gallivanters of bile. it's hazy, the recollections. like the smoke from California that blew to the Netherlands. a red sun I stared into for weeks. do not look directly at it; my mother used to say. it took me years to understand that true work is to look at what others will not see. there’s a way to perceive the light without getting burned.
the earth is drying up; its bones will be a brittle carcass studded with rock and human rubble. moss will be the first thing to erode. it requires too much water. moisture breeds microbes; thus, I am born. I keep pulling the moth in tarot. flighty. whimsical. idealistic. stripped butterfly. I move like moth in the Spanish streets. long corridors decorated with plants and proud graffiti. a faceless woman walked by with her nipples pointing the direction. a tight beige dress and navy tattoos on her thighs. her name is Stella, Latin for star. she moved like the rolling tide. smooth and still all at once. I followed her to a dark bar with high stools and green walls. she ordered a whiskey with her cigarette and moved her lips against each fingertip, sucking lightly on each digit. moisture. moss. mother. her stomach is tight as glass.
I ordered a glass of white wine and sat on the edge of the patio, where the shadow moves in the breeze. my knees were striped with the white and black. viaducts from shin to hipbone. the bridge is for possibility. kinetic energy. potential in motion. movement dictates the extension of power. a stone cannot move. a tree moves only by wind. Monarchs travel from the North Americas to Central Mexico, over water and rock, tucking their wings for sleepless transformation. the chrysalis waits to be broken. I move every ninety days. unconsciously, dragging my bag stuffed with frilly things and leather.
love is the unbroken line, the thing that sounds when the streets are silent. In Barcelona, the alleyways are never still. I cannot hear what needs to be said during the waking hours. when I sleep, it’s heavy and wet. the chrysalis is loose around my shoulders and calves. condensation lifts from my sun-soaked limbs and black mold blossoms on the windowsill. I drool silk and webs are spun where spiders lay their eggs. I dream of the woman in the beige dress. mother. mothballs. metanoia: the journey of changing the ways of oneself.
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