I will not show you what I have.
It fits in one hand, but barely.
Its edges grasp around my index finger as I support its light weight.
It has fingers of its own, full of cracks and wrongly placed joints.
It attempts to catch the world with a gnarled perspective that fits in the leaking cup of its palm.
Its colour is one of drought,
a too hot sun,
timelessness
and mummification.
Its fingertips long for the salty waters in which it used to lie languidly.
Its entwined fist shares in itself a supple woodiness and coastal coarseness.
Its sylvan features, that now seem so inherent, were once absent. And still,
it retains a static sliver of its former, fluid, home.
It was only in a void created by heat, multiplied by stone, that the skin stretched and split.
Its pores instilled with
salt, silently
emanating a scent of
silt and stillness.
It was both
tossed, shaped, kneaded and
kneaded, shaped, tossed in
circular motions that seemed to mimic dialogue.
Its then nimble fingers plunged at the tide, marking its liminal position.
It was only slowly,
tentatively,
that its waving search became dormant and in its stillness it waited.
It lay amidst washed-out colours, ruffled feathers and the occasional shift,
not discarded,
but lying.
It was as if it had forgotten its earlier movement,
its water addled state.
Its choice for absence was a turning inwards that made time irrelevant,
an endless wind parched it with a caress.
It was collected by me in a land where I did not feel comfortable.
I treaded as if watched and went a
slow, meandering,
gathering
way.
I moved in places deserted until I was stopped, turned around.
I found it as I
was twisting my body towards being buked.
I shaped myself towards it,
bending my knees, cracking my neck.
I felt it jumping outwards, catching my gaze
through layers of remains.
I grated knuckles whilst it peered
beyond shifting sediment and
motions awash.
My feet rushed us now
further
still!
I will not show you what I have.
Pauw Vos
paratextmag.com 