Shana Ross
TRANSPARENCY IS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE
If she was deep before and unplumbed, she’s dried down to a shallow bed now. Hundred year drought levels of brittle and cracked revelation. The corpses are not really surprising, but we offer our shock out of respect. It’s been a year, I’ll give you that. And by year, I mean an amount of time you can’t wrangle. Call it carcinization. The days turn into crabs the way every living thing tries to, sooner or later. Call me if you find a bucket, maybe some tongs; we can gather an understanding. Be careful. Those fuckers are fast when they scuttle, unpredictable and quick to pinch. When I picture her, I see her walking away from the harness of linear time. Damn, she really did it. Just unclipped it and let it fall. She showers to wash away feelings that can’t be hidden under word trousers and a knit cardigan. She also avoids showers because they wash away the little color she has left. She refuses to run a bath because she hates the rolls of her body when she pulls her knees into her chest like a paper bag self-crumpling after the donut has been eaten. These are her favorite ways to defeat emptiness: feed it, then crush its contours. The post office loses her magazines. She stops flying commercial. She keeps the sourdough and cats alive. After she got used to being unseen, the idea of invisibility was more attractive than she could have forseen. Not a small life, but a clear one. You can walk through the world as a full-on monster if the light passes through you without scattering.