I and I—the High Beam
-I-
I thought she might have been the Devil, emerging from the heady mist.
Crowned by delicate, branching antlers
She had a deer skull for a head. Skin pale as porcelain, and justly transparent. Enough of it showing that you might go crazy.
‘Hey hon, I’ve been wondering when you’d come `round—’ she folded one bone-white leg over the other.
“Did you know that women die more often in car crashes? Cars aren't made for our weight, our ergonomics—”
She didn't say a word. Just stared, stock-still, like—
She was caught in a high beam.
“Sorry—” “—I think I took a wrong turn.”
I didn't turn in time
‘You're going the right way. I’m glad you came by.’
“I'm not.”
‘You're not—?’
“Going the right way, and I shouldn’t be seeing you.”
‘Did they tell you that?’
‘Maybe you’d like me better like this, then—’ Her skin sloughs away. She’s neither flesh nor blood. Just naked bones.
I felt so suddenly ill, a prey animal pinned under her measured gaze. I could see her spine through her ribs.
“I cannot bear you like that.” I feel like an intruder. “I don’t want to be like you. You didn’t deserve it.”
I met her glassy eyes —flashing red in the high beam. Hers, mine mirrored. Wide and hapless.
‘You must bear me this way’ I think she smiled then. ‘They’ll wear you down if they can. You mustn’t let them.’ ‘You must bear me. You must bear yourself, love, even.’
Cars— roads— weren't made for you either. You’re hardly worth it are you?
I made as if to run, to burrow round myself in a wiry knot to escape her. [prey animal. Hunted for sport—
‘—You’re not.’]
‘You have teeth too, my dear.’
I was caught in that caustic light, same as her.
‘They didn’t tell you that, did they?’
Bone crunched. Tires squealed.
“They’ve [not] told me a lot of things.”
The high beams kept on shining.
-II-
Are you afraid to take up space? My shadow has growing pains. Even now. My tongue ties itself in knots but I do my best to be heard anyways. I wonder about it when the girls around me mumble under their breaths— Who told you that you are void of lungs to speak with. It makes me acidic. How dare they.
I want to trace the map age is drawing over your skin. Beautiful things are best observed slowly. And I’ll fall in love with you just long enough to commit your face to paper. There's a sanctity in the stretch lines and odd scars. Your body is not tainted by use but worn into a lovely item. I hope you can wear it more comfortably with each year, whether it's in need of mending to fit better, whether it starts to fray or loosen.
-III-
There are plants growing between her ribs. Varieties I can name. More which I can not.
‘Even flowers are carnivores.’
They eat the dead and blossom.’
‘You are not one thing.’
“I've been saying that I’m a woman. I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean.”
‘But a compound. Multifaceted crystal. Ecosystem.’
‘You wear womanhood like a coat. It’s the performance of the thing, the style and sometimes a sweltering weight, a history of [women] before you.’
“I loathe to bear it. I must.”
‘You wear womanhood like a coppice sprouting from your spine,’
‘like a crocus bulb, blooming from under your sternum’
"her">‘a colony of ants in your arteries.’
‘She is not a mold to fit into, but a process.’
“I’m sorry. I doubted you.”
I had sat on the dirt by the roadside. “Maybe I meant to come this way.”
“I thought I had killed you. I never wanted to see you again.”
‘It comes with age’ she murmurs. ‘You can only pretend to forget.’
‘We don't die easily.’
“But I will bear you. I will bear myself.”
‘Good. Now grow. Keep moving.’
-IV-
I was mistaken, she was not the Devil.
