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| j a tyler |  | 1. & (seventy-one) There is a girl flying, in the air, and she could have been. Now, she is a figment, a segment, a sliver of a whole, something else. She is flying, rowing imagined oars in pretend skies, skimming. She flies, this girl, in the sky. And the blue, the color of this, the way it floats, this is the iris of her mother, her should have been mother. This girl was never born. This girl who never was, isn't. She is now, only, rowing and flying in the sky, the clouds, the iris, the blue. She laughs and smiles this girl, thinking of things she doesn't understand or know. She watches the ground, the earth, the world beneath her, the squares and lines, laughing at the squares and lines. Her father was made from squares and lines. Her father watches out the square of a window at the lines of telephone wires, poles, lines. His sky is grey as he dies, as he is, having taken in his last breath already, having breathed the last breath already. He will die, this man who could have been her father, this girl's father, this girl now a tremble of imagination in a sky of blue mother iris. The sky, the background of her pretendings, her, this girl, flying. 2. & (seventy-three) She is a woman, walking down a path, arms loaded and kept with the things she carries, the grasp, the pull. She is carried off by him, the chest pockets of his shirt, the clinging sawdust and dirt of his hands, his knuckles, the rivers of his eyes. She watches him pass, as always and daily, enough times to know, to get it, his head in her head nodding, going yes, up down and her answering too, yes, yes yes yes. But she doesn't, she can't. This is a woman who doesn't see anything, a blind woman. She is blind, this woman, this would have been mother. And even if he had nodded, up down, yes yes yes, passing her on the packed down dirt of the road, of their fingers, she wouldn't have seen it, couldn't have seen it. She doesn't see. She smells when rain is coming, when the leaves in their green will pelt up down, a semblance of yes, agreement and change. And she hears when snow racks and levels on itself, the fluid build of piece by piece. But she sees nothing, her, this woman as a tree, this man as an axe, an auger, a strap, a tool. She doesn't understand words, can't, has never. She is compact, tightly in, her own fingers of dirt and paths, her own imaginings, her own retching past going back, coming up, the axes and augers, the tools, the straps. So there is a girl, flying in the blue of her sky, her eyes. This man's, this woman's. This girl that wasn't theirs because because because. No words. No up down yes. Nothing. | |
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