silly justwrite

Until the end when I let my ribbons go, watch the wind lift them and then leave them behind, I will keep my hair in braids because I'm afraid it will leave me if it tastes freedom. I set my marrow on fire just to feel my insides burn, not worried about being empty because my skin keeps the smoke from escaping, except the very edges that crawl out of my ears, send their cursive wisps to blend into the clouds then disperse across the atmosphere until they are hidden before my eyes, glowing in the darkness, trapping shadows without really knowing what to do with them. I'm still on the ground, shifting more than the plates I'm standing on which isn't hard because they really are very slow, slower than molasses in January as if I am my grandmother's mother, not a relative to me because we only share a name, and a middle one at that, while the rest is a secret on a black and white photograph, not sure if the women it holds are really as eccentric as you say because they have no voices since their words are candles that reaches their own bases decades ago, and their hairstyles and buttoned blouses are only as foreign as I want them to be. I pick up my sketchbook instead, draw zigzags and corners in every color I have except red, write a letter in the middle and address it to myself, can't find its place in the alphabet until I take all the numbers away, not by subtraction or division but by mentioning there are biscuits with jam in the sun room, enough to share while we rest and the silver rusts and I forget where I put the polish jar, decide it doesn't matter unless the company doesn't like us, in which case we shouldn't care anyway. I imagine notebooks opened across tables, my family sniffling not because it's a funeral or because it's a wedding but because people really grow so quickly until they're so old they shrink like my grama, except I haven't noticed because I've been getting taller all the while, but I take her hands in mine, wonder about the secrets that have made her bones so soft, listen to her lessons that she sings in the kind of whisper that a whole room can hear, and I can see dreams dancing behind her eyes, leaving muffled patterns in the grass until the stars rise and taste the next morning and set again, then I am so old I don't know what to do with myself other than set me on a shelf and write about what the world is doing, pretending I haven't already felt what they're feeling. But soon I have to give my grama her words back, altered slightly, framed by zigzags in every color but red, and I take a picture because someone told me once that it will last longer, but I'm not sure that's true because by the time it's developed and sitting on my counter I've forgotten why I took it, what my voice sounded like and how tall I was and whether or not those footprints behind my eyes were really mine, but I let it all go and wander to the next room to see if they have my favorite kind of jam, noticing the cursive the smoke left on my walls, nod at its message, deciding I will know the end when it's here.

[also, now my writing notebook is full]