Hands Along the Wall

Of blood, tooth, and horn: distant memories carving a way through an alien world. The cradle of the world isn’t warm, not compared to our mothers’ womb. Tight compress, too big circle, behind an armor of flesh that we claw and kick against. Bodies of water have deceitful depth at night, perhaps there is enough room for one’s reflection. Looking down into the mirror, suddenly a blob, light- mass, stares back. Sphere, plane of varying shapes, wide-eyed seashells circled with color. Only with ripples, the interruption of time and weight, does their reflection disappear. Our earliest predecessors wander within this new soup. In the darkness of caves, they lie away, a break from the harshness of the terrain. Just like the meat we tear and transform, as animated flesh we all can decay. Creatures of nature they constantly move to sustain themselves. Each day is an experiment, testing the bounds of this perceived world. Conditions and particles obscured from our sight perform miracles and tragedies. A moment may come when another is left behind, a piece of themselves. To grow, wither, and re-grow: growing to die, desiring to stay alive. Within the sockets of another face, do they recognize each other? The same, same slope of a nose and seashells that see, open and close, a heartbeat: different skin and marks and linings. One can swallow a rock, the other cannot. Five fingered tools bound to their arms toughen with skill, scale, and harden with age. Magic in seashells and curiosity in the control of our touch. From a palm to fist to bone, ivory to stone to iron to steel bullets. Of blood, tooth, and horn the signing of their palms is fueled by the breath of life, growing against the forces of nature. To look at the unscathed rock, uniform, add pressure and wonder and wit for a portal. Like a dream, distant memory, at the base of the spine, void of time as I am unsettled by the thought that we have not left the cave.

——-Observer