Walking with a ghost

We could be sixteen again: Flipping through CDs though the Internet exists. Stabbing skin with needles though there’s money now for guns. We live like we never grew up. An overgrown yard. A dish full of sinks. Cereal straight from boxes with word scrambles, a maze. This kind of nostalgia that’s violent or sweet. I’ll see your undercut and raise you this old bush in the pit of my arms. The way pretending an age can walk us into a street, lets us forget things. Risk is what? Just before I remember my body, home. More than clothes. Can I keep walking? Or can I age myself the other way: feel a daughter’s death like she’s my own. Feel a son’s death like he’s like my own. And why the need they be like my own? Age is a suspension. Risk wears the road. Rubber bullet like a bullet on soft or well-worn skin. Dressing wounds is a quiet gesture that prevents infection.

I can’t picture myself

I can draw a very good tree, elaborate with fractal branches and nutrient rich roots. A tree looks nothing like a person, so it’s easier to replicate, staring at angles rather than eyes, lines. I can make my very good tree a tree of guns or equations. Substitute the branches for something concrete. We can talk about the connection of things. I can poke my very good tree into my very dry skin with India ink. No erasure, every mis-angle permanently placed. I can wrap the roots around my ankle. I can sing as I do. Make a little mark, or, Make me a line of fine fine spots. There will be no portrait on our wedding day. Screens will never etch us beautiful. But I can roll up my pants sit and stare at myself: this one very good thing I have made.

Aimee Wright Clow is a visual artist and poet living in Durham. Her writing and videos have appeared with journals such as Reality Beach, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, [PANK], Masque & Spectacle, Stone Canoe, and William & Mary Review. Her books arts project, A Brief Map of Albany, was printed at Utilities Included in 2019. aimeecharrison.com