sankofa mary LEE
The light filtering through the heavy curtains met with the dust particles hanging in the air--photons diffused in such a way that the entire room looked like a black and white photograph. A girl slept in the armchair, her spine hunched over like an unanswered question. The tangled quilt she had fallen asleep under had abandoned her throughout the night. It lay in a heap on the floor below her, a determined corner still reaching up to wrap around her left ankle. She breathed in a quiet, shaky rhythm.
There was no transition point. No moment between asleep and awake where she hovered in disorientation. The light simply eased its way across the room to the corner in which she slept and touched her with the love of a mother. As soon as it warmed her she rose to life, up as though she had simply been sitting there awake all along. Her movement towards the kitchen was slow and graceful, like a vine twisting up an iron gate. There was no rush, no one to meet, no errands to run. Her life was a single day, broken over and over again by sleep. She reached the kitchen and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window. Her breath fogged it up and she exhaled twice for good measure.
She turned to the counter behind her, and reached for the same loaf of bread she’d eaten from for dinner. The knife she had used then still lay beside it and she picked it up. As she pressed the serrated edge down against the crust, the bread held its hard posture--unmoving as she cracked through its stale shell. She placed a slice on a plate, pale pink china that squeaked against the hard crust. The once white dough of the bread had turned to a maze. A garden of green and blue spores. They criss-crossed one another and reached out for the crust around the edges. Her eyes fell upon the molded slice unphased and she spread strawberry preserves over the mildewed wildflowers.
***
To die young is to be cursed to never be loved or successful at the same time. I think of you each morning. Imagine that at the same time we sit in two different kitchens and eat the same breakfast. I try to imagine you with fresh fruit, with bread warm from the oven. But it always turns sour in my mind. When you’re only two, a year is half the time you’ve been alive. As each moment passes, it becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your life. Every day, your presence becomes a smaller percentage of mine. Time is something that I can’t ever get a sense for, I surround myself with clocks in order to find some sort of order in my day but my skin crawls when I hear them ticking.
I imagine that you’re laying on your back in a golden bath of overgrown field grass. The sun lays beside you, the lover you could never lock down. You’re thinking of the last time you saw me, when you said “I’m sorry” at the same instant that I said “I miss you.” A bag zipped up and a door pulled shut. You’re thinking of anything at all.
***
A jack in the box from her childhood was in the corner, dead yellow roses rising up around the face. The girl woke up. How long had she been asleep? Five minutes? Two years? She knew the truth about this house--narrow, wooden, lifeless. She was, as we all will someday be, a human life reduced to a bouquet of flowers. She felt so tired. All your life you move between lines, off to work, back home again. It was only here, in this place of permanence that she had found the time to move without a cause.
She imagined piano music, and as it swelled through the room she, with no sense of rhythm in her feet, began to twirl in a circle. Over and over again until bony ankle caught bony ankle and she crumbled to the carpet. Somewhere in the distant the wail of a siren, a cracked windshield. A girl reduced to dust.
***
It's next year. I can see it now. I make the drive north, towards home, towards you. Directions I wrote down in pen on a coffee shop napkin lay in the cupholder beside me. The car bounces as it turns off of the road, onto the gruffness of a gravel lot. I quiet the engine. Motivated half by fear, half by courage. My life is etched into the calcium mineral of my bones, as yours is into stone. I find your name in a row towards the back.
It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten. I kneel down to greet you.
There was no transition point. No moment between asleep and awake where she hovered in disorientation. The light simply eased its way across the room to the corner in which she slept and touched her with the love of a mother. As soon as it warmed her she rose to life, up as though she had simply been sitting there awake all along. Her movement towards the kitchen was slow and graceful, like a vine twisting up an iron gate. There was no rush, no one to meet, no errands to run. Her life was a single day, broken over and over again by sleep. She reached the kitchen and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window. Her breath fogged it up and she exhaled twice for good measure.
She turned to the counter behind her, and reached for the same loaf of bread she’d eaten from for dinner. The knife she had used then still lay beside it and she picked it up. As she pressed the serrated edge down against the crust, the bread held its hard posture--unmoving as she cracked through its stale shell. She placed a slice on a plate, pale pink china that squeaked against the hard crust. The once white dough of the bread had turned to a maze. A garden of green and blue spores. They criss-crossed one another and reached out for the crust around the edges. Her eyes fell upon the molded slice unphased and she spread strawberry preserves over the mildewed wildflowers.
***
To die young is to be cursed to never be loved or successful at the same time. I think of you each morning. Imagine that at the same time we sit in two different kitchens and eat the same breakfast. I try to imagine you with fresh fruit, with bread warm from the oven. But it always turns sour in my mind. When you’re only two, a year is half the time you’ve been alive. As each moment passes, it becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your life. Every day, your presence becomes a smaller percentage of mine. Time is something that I can’t ever get a sense for, I surround myself with clocks in order to find some sort of order in my day but my skin crawls when I hear them ticking.
I imagine that you’re laying on your back in a golden bath of overgrown field grass. The sun lays beside you, the lover you could never lock down. You’re thinking of the last time you saw me, when you said “I’m sorry” at the same instant that I said “I miss you.” A bag zipped up and a door pulled shut. You’re thinking of anything at all.
***
A jack in the box from her childhood was in the corner, dead yellow roses rising up around the face. The girl woke up. How long had she been asleep? Five minutes? Two years? She knew the truth about this house--narrow, wooden, lifeless. She was, as we all will someday be, a human life reduced to a bouquet of flowers. She felt so tired. All your life you move between lines, off to work, back home again. It was only here, in this place of permanence that she had found the time to move without a cause.
She imagined piano music, and as it swelled through the room she, with no sense of rhythm in her feet, began to twirl in a circle. Over and over again until bony ankle caught bony ankle and she crumbled to the carpet. Somewhere in the distant the wail of a siren, a cracked windshield. A girl reduced to dust.
***
It's next year. I can see it now. I make the drive north, towards home, towards you. Directions I wrote down in pen on a coffee shop napkin lay in the cupholder beside me. The car bounces as it turns off of the road, onto the gruffness of a gravel lot. I quiet the engine. Motivated half by fear, half by courage. My life is etched into the calcium mineral of my bones, as yours is into stone. I find your name in a row towards the back.
It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten. I kneel down to greet you.
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Mary Lee is a senior working towards her BA in Anthropology at SUNY New Paltz. She minors in Creative Writing and Deaf Studies.