Dawn Lundy Martin: A Letter From the Interior
“Sense,” the first sacrifice—that cohesion dispersed. Only
lull left, “pause,” they say, no such thing as “culmination”
unless cupping the squeezed out life, black, a delicate furry thing.
Disturbances and gun buying. My mother refuses everything.
Her body is mostly skin, mostly enduring. I hear hope in her voice.
She tells me, when the pain ends, when calm comes, she’s going
to buy me a birthday present and it’s going to be a good one.
Remember? Soft to fingers, a thunderous pour, the clean feel of snow?
The way a child body can walk through a blizzard unbeknownst to anyone and deep inside of her own feeling space. Somewhere else a cage rattles. In that place, fingers raw to bone. But, here, gorgeous desolation, and the first remembered sign of one’s selfness. The I emerges, a staff, a kingdom.
