This is the first post, which requires an introduction, which is something I will not give you.
Not because I will this recalcitrance, but because it wills me. Because there is nothing I can say which won’t be said in time.
Besides, I only have 25 minutes,* a new experiment in time management, in cajoling brilliance from beneath the banal, mostly un-brilliant folds of my brain.
I am at home, which means I am in Arizona, visiting from Utah, which is where I live with my husband and baby.
Arizona is merciless, the only adjective I can think of when standing beneath the blue shock of cotton-cloud fuzzed sky.
Sun burns.
Not just the sidewalk, but your feet, your head, your arms.
I am here visiting my family, which now consists of my mother, father, brother, sister, a growing family of cockroaches and the ghosts of bad memories. The memories live in my body- in my stomach like acid, in my intestines like parasites. Even the food makes me sick. I need frequent walks, in the seering glare of sun, to refreshen my sanity.
Something about the severity of sun reminds me of myself- excessive, merciless, focused like the puncture of pain. Almost, almost I could send people scrambling indoors with my gaze.
I have more siblings, by the way- 5 others, which makes us 8 in all. They are good people, who were present for the worst years of my life. Not their fault, I always say, although somewhere beneath the merciless gaze of language (tucked away like so many underground animals), I know that someone must be blamed. Someone must always be blamed. I repeat it like a mantra: that person is me.
I am babysitting my siblings, so I make them meals- vegan, plant-based. They aren’t used to that, but they are very good teenagers- adaptable and grateful. “I would like my daughter to turn out like you,” I say, and I mean it, although her life will be much different, I hope.
Tonight we will eat fruit after dinner- fresh pineapple and sliced rounds of oranges and grapefruits, small blueberries with their skin giving way beneath our teeth-blades, revealing un unpleasant tartness beneath.
Then I will squat on the concrete porch as it pulsates with fading heat. I will squat and watch the darkness begin tearing at the flesh of the sun, the black threads of Night slurping out the life-juice of Day. I will watch the carnage of a day giving way. Then I will surrender to the darkness myself, and sleep.
-Sondra
*I am no longer limiting myself to 25 minutes, just one post a day. Usually they are written quickly, but edited later.
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