Before You Were This
Before you were this you were a paper cut. A gentle, nagging itch waiting patiently while the universe decided if you would heal or rip wide open. You were a boulder on a frozen beach, sheets of ice slamming against you for tens of thousands of years until a pattern emerged and the pattern was pain. And then the pattern was fear. And then the pattern stopped.
Before you were this you were a set of ten fingerprints left behind you in maple tree sap. You were the sound your feet made evading the shadows of skyscrapers and technology and landfills sprawled out in every direction. You were a bird of prey just across the river, always waiting. I watched you through my grandfather’s binoculars. I watched you watch me back.
Before you were this you were a telegraph. You were also the encoding and decoding of said telegraph. You were “I need another loan.” You were “It’s been hot as hell lately.” You were “Everything’s good here, everyone misses you.” You were “Please come back to me soon.”
Before you were this you were an argument. Plates were shattered against the wall and extension cords and documents and suitcases were thrown out the window and you were the children who found all of it the next day. You were a glass of ice water held against a stranger’s forehead on a 105 degree day. Before that you were ice. And before that you were fog.
Before you were this you were a flickering lightbulb in the basement of a house out in the country. You illuminated an elderly woman in intermittent yellow light as she slowly combed through old issues of National Geographic, carefully memorizing all the places she’d never been and all the people she was before she was this person. After your circuit gave out you were the darkness that held her and then let her go.
Before you were this you were the page that made the paper cut. Printed upon you was a photograph of a new sunrise finding glaciers atop a mountain range. You drew a small spot of blood and then you were the blood and then you were the bandage. And then you began.
