[open] we're like falling water, any

[holocene]

at once i knew i was not magnificent

She shimmers at the edges, softens like water.
She has not learned to control it yet, the invisibility.
So she winks in and out of focus.

She walks through the forest with her head tilted at a funny angle. And she is so, so careful not to snag any of her twigs or her branches because she had learned the hard way how painful it is when they snap. The care she takes gives her the illusion of being dainty, which she surely would have hated were she capable of watching herself (but she is not so she just moves carefully with her head tilted at a funny angle, winking in and out of focus as she goes).

There are times she glances down and finds that whole parts of her are missing -- one leg gone and then two legs gone and then both legs back the next time she looks -- and she lets out great peals of laughter. How funny it is to be alive, she thinks, even if sometimes it is painful and she has to be more careful than other children her age lest she snap a branch and reduce herself to tears again.

For now, though, in those eyes there is a dreamy sort of quality. As if she is watching the world pass by from someplace far away. The leaves rustle as she moves and she delights in the music they make, sometimes taking a series of quick, shuffling steps just to hear them sing.

And when she happens upon someone in the relative darkness, there is a hind leg and half her tail missing but she pulls on a dreamy smile all the same.

“Hello,” she says, “it’s about time you showed up.” As if she had been expecting them, as if they had kept her waiting. Still, there is no accusation in her tone as she grins up at them.

HOLOCENE