she returned soft-skinned for him. among all the scaly demons he filled the void of her with, only one rivaled his love’s oily skin, powdered with the faintest hints of naivete and whimsy, the one whose eyes spoke of the same frenzied energy but with darker tones of jaded knowing. she was not the mind that he wanted; he missed the steam engine of his golden girl, a perpetually chugging life force that buoyed his dreams, stemmed new branches into his future, a vorpal pool churning and seething and spitting. his determination to stay purified of the taunting peripheral figures remained, even into the screaming silence of night’s bared teeth, the barren island of his bed, hot with a frequency long lost. he even found ghosts to occupy her spaces, in the forms of salamanders, screwdrivers, succulents that always wanted more moisture. nights became his waking hours, his life one long bated breath. he could no longer wake up and be surprised by a body, until one day he did and it was not hers. it was alien, it was an it. he thought of her shape, her mountain range of covers and shut the blinds tighter, but that slit of light could not be fooled. sleep seemed to take more energy out of him than it infused. his mind would flit to the electric hay-like hairs on her arms, her frail little limbs, and he felt the sinking sands beneath his ribs. the translucency of a nail could melt his heart, a knotted birth mark tugged him to someplace far away, and he thought he would never return to his body feeling whole.
but she did return, bursting, lithe, dark rings under stormy eyes. she returned like he knew she would, though he could never understand now. after a fall of nights, how could she suddenly appear with a serpentine spine still protruding, bones even more pronounced than their days of bedside starvation. she was a narrow thing, with steam still shuddering through her. the golden glow was now imbued with softer hues, an aurora borealis of silvery silk waning and rising, her skin thin as a moth’s. he wanted to know her wings as he once did. he began weaving together bits of everything that she touched so that he may always be close to her. the very littlest hint of an indication that she wanted him near gave him aspiration and serenity for days. the soft curves of every tiny bone felt wired to his shivering limbs; muscles mutated to hold hers in a silver spoon. all the while he saw her weaving in and out of avalanches, siphoning the water out of his organs. tiny whirring noises woke him up, a triangle of light illuminated against the wall. she muttered different languages beneath her breath and sometimes he felt a desert wind blow across her cheek. he began a series of wide-eyed nights again so she couldn’t shake him off in a sweat-drenched slumber. he watched her lips mostly, though once he peeled the covers back to watch her little toe exposed, just to see how much it twitched at night. she wanted the sheets to mold to her shape. they both felt as if they were riding along a swift-moving current, knowingly and willingly, without any understanding of how they were to get off.
when you push me very far off, to the periphery of my sanity and the cords in my lungs have to pluck themselves to sleep, i hope you realize what i’m becoming. i can’t define it yet, but a boy in morocco once called me withering and i don’t even think he knew what that means. maybe it’s not as wilted of a word as i thought, for it also means devastating, demolishing. they also referred to me as the willowy one. i’m not so concerned with their perceptions though, mostly yours, but your mind seems to have sanded over, barren in your disconcerted way. never have i felt so neglected, so small. you’ve put so much distance between us i couldn’t find you if you let me.
if i close my eyes it can be right there, asphyxiation and honeysuckle, that deep southern honeysuckle that swarms and swaths, dabs at your ribs and slathers your eyelids, that sweet sticky swarming honeysuckle. she was not a southern gil though, she was not even eastern, she had rivers flowing through her veins. still she was a shapeshifter; she could mold. and the heat was very swollen, her brain expanded miles across that southern land. the whole time breathing the air and knowing it wasn’t hers to take, it belonged to gophers and boys made of straw. she felt from her toes up. static fibers in the tall grasses, a sense of falling rattling her empty stomach. sounds took on a metallic quality, everything like it was covered with a tin can. she needed more stairs, golden light making things distant. her brain kept reeling the same track, the film catching on fire and looping back trailing charcoal and ash. she saw him as a shell around her. and all the time suckling that honey.
Bones poking out of these spindle limbs I am writing in the dark, insides falling out of me. Nearly anything could topple me over right now. I’m an alien being blinking at a world I’ll never understand.
there is a rawness that only reveals itself with a certain slanting of light or dissonance of the heart when a sound pierces through sleep so softly it tears at the dream’s seam, little silver fish deftly darting and swooshing into chasms without names, holes that narrow if not fed and diffuse with a maddening red that swells and beats to awaken the hold that slumbers beneath, crooning its echoes between the ears and slashing stars across the brain’s velvet it whispers to absorb the bloom like oil in a wound, the sweltering heat at the depths of the sea.
[the siren's story]
By Barbara Jane Reyes
she wasn’t born in this city. she found its basalt greenstone chunks, seafloor forced skyward. it found her hands through mist and odors whirring pigeons’ clubfeet fluttering, toothless men’s paper sacks spilling elixirs, roots, shark fin tonics. heat swelling sewer steam rising, side street chess match maneuvers mystifying. it sought her whirlwind hair, grown seavine thick. songbird, adrift, nestling neon, she crafted snares for moths, butterflies, treasure hunting children tracing ideographs: sky, sun. patina spires, smirking dragon boys humming silk lanterns, flight of phoenixes through fish vendors’ stalls, corrugated plastic blackbird perches, jade-ringed gardens, needle-tipped shanties. it bulleted trees, lighting hash pipes; herbalists’ storefront canopies concealing leathered men, versed in languages of whiskered ghosts. it invented her dialect carving tongue: salt fables, yellow caution tape palaces. she lost herself in this city. it lured her, drank her air; honey voice’s precision, hybrid beyond memory. songbird, adrift, this city’s misplaced siren. migration patterns subterranean streams swallowed whole.
