The Open Matt Project

Enjoy the View

I see her everything. She's crossing the street, looking both ways, holding a handbag and leaning into the pace and I see her holding her mother's hand, not listening but fascinated with the cars as the streetcrossing lesson passes her by.

Her grip on the handbag changes as she moves, and she's holding a plastic jumprope handle with candystripes or a fist of blanket or the completed test and she grasps and releases the boy's hand, the doorknob, the favorite jewelry, the edge of her pants, shirt, shoes, the handbag she crosses the street with.

She leans when she walks, a graduated stagger which in turn graduated from a fall and tears and mother again. Her feet and legs listen to her belly and her womb, everything above just hitchhiking. Touching the ground again, toe first there to miss the puddle, now steadfast to part the crowd, it's her impact you see.

I stripped her while she walked. Her foot had barely left the curb before her clothes were gone and then her skin and fat and by the time the sinew of her heel met the street she was on her way to bones and marrow.

Time regurgitated her life while she stripped and gripped. No breasts or hips or cheekbones or steeled eyes. Now smaller, and smaller again, and still smaller losing shape and definition but gaining in pomegranate potential. Hair and nails and skin and shit and food and water fly out and in and in and out and she's never the same for an instant. Yet she's smaller and more curled and more until just a point in time.

Every motion of her limbs, her face, her body echoes a motion seen or felt or inspired by something else. She's a dancing tree with invisible winds. Those movements radiate from her and oncoming walkers turn their paths slightly towards a better look or away from that bitch, cars stop or slow or don't, and where her eyes catch they are caught forever. She is an invisible wind and the trees dance for her.

So, if I take a speck of dust and I hold it to you, you understand. I toss a pinch of salt and you understand. A breath of smoke curling from my lips you understand. These are the things of our world. A wind undoing your umbrella, A smokestack pouring darkness into the sky, and a flock of birds flying formation are yet still things of your world. Now the clouds themselves, the tides of the ocean, the leaves of the forest and the cans in the alley. Only the vision changes, nothing else. Can you see? I can.

I see her everything and in it is me.

Posted by Matt at January 26, 2006 03:48 AM