She has six ways of being —
Through her mouth: she knows not to reveal herself and speaks often because no secrets can be told when one doesn’t refrain from speaking. Her being through her mouth unfulfills me, a prophecy that is no longer operative because time has come to a standstill, a film strip that rolls without having been developed.
Through her hair: sometimes it is a deep red, like an overly ripe blood orange, sometimes it is dark and reckless, like an animal that watches you in your sleep. How I wanted to touch her being through her hair, unveil the precious patch of skin in the back of her neck that not even she had thought to uncover.
Through her neck: a line of soft hairs almost muted to the distance between bodies extended from the base of her head to the beginning of her back; hairs that rose, turned and opened like moonlit flowers when that distance vanished. Her being through her neck would stiffen upon the touch of my fingers, the tip of two fingers unaccustomed to touching. As I slid them up her neck, the alert flesh would grow tender and right then I knew that she either trusted me or had surrendered.
Through her knees: something urgent hid in the knees; through them, her being communicated a sense of the ineluctable, the weakness to be found at the end of all things that last longer than a spring. I cried over her knees, inconsolable at the sight of those two rounded creatures sitting atop twin hills in a land that would remain foreign to me.
Through her ears: her ears were the smallest seashells, though you could still hear waves washing up on the shore. At first I had the impulse to cover them with my hands and hold them as a keepsake; I now know this isn’t right: her being through her ears is also the part of her that listens, catching the sound of utterances that don’t yet make sense.
Through her eyes: her eyes are the meaning that she gives to herself and retains from others. Her being through her eyes is an elusive entity that I never wanted to capture; one night I dreamt of her brown eyes and assigned them to a newborn daughter, then to someone else, then to the dream itself. With those eyes she mocked me and pitied me for paying attention to her, but they also awoke me to her despair of ever being forgotten.
And a seventh way, through her skin: I cannot write about her being through her skin: the skin is the sacred pact between those I didn’t have and all the future longings that arise on the face of the earth, only for us to later learn that they have no place here.
