The paper is the size of a truck and used to be a tree. It lies between us, on the floor, and used to be a mulberry growing near here and we sat in its shade and kissed and picked up a leaf and this found object made it into your art, my writing.
Paper made like this, wisp thin, treelines still visible, is art. And the lifelines of it are pretty: like lips, hips, skin. It’s like the place where I touch my finger to the shadow cast by your vertebrae after we’ve made love. You don’t let me do this often. Today your body is held tight and your eyes are dark and unbound. Our thoughts are brutal, battlescarred, and you’ve almost had enough of it all. But you’re not talking, haven’t been talking for a long time. It’s your closed hand that gives you away: skeleton bones and thick knuckles, pale broken by red. You don’t even know you’re upset. I am witness and so live it for you.
There’s what’s left of a dead tree between us: cut, pulped, reformed. You hold a charcoal in your hand, I have a thin-nibbed pen in mine. Our bodies are connected over this space by invisible threads of fear. I squat, my feet holding down the bark-remnant. You stretch out on your belly, your now open palm splayed on the page like an embossment. Like earth over a new grave. We’ve never been this close to the end before. If we can laugh it will be okay. A bell rings, echoes through the next minutes. You start in one corner, me another, and we may meet in the middle or you might fly off one edge and me the other.
published in The Herald, Books Section
