some stratum in the layer cake

 On the first evening of the ritual involving bathing in historical fictions, I felt the warm water shift the contours of my form. Once the impacts of the globally enforced reclusivity settled, this became the main stage for unraveling life. 

While there, I met a man of a slightly older age than mine, with whom I initially thought I had nothing in common. However, as I got to know him, his shape and lineage started to intertwine with my own. In the bath I felt my figure expand to the size of his. My hair turned darker, my arms a bit stronger, and an imaginary tusk started growing from the lower part of my body, puncturing my form’s previous perimeter. I would rinse this sensation before leaving the bathing area, but the more I familiarized myself with him, the more I would find lingering traces of him on my body despite how well I washed myself. 

One day when leaving the bathing area, I was drunk with his existence. I only made it a few steps out of the shower, to my room before falling through my bed and finding myself somewhere entirely different than before. I opened my eyes to the discovery of a brilliant sun, which my vision gradually calmed, revealing further details of my environment. I was drifting on a pond, my fuller arms pressing against the edges of a boat. The air felt warm but fresh with spring. From behind the mountains of my knees, a girl rose up, swaying her arms side to side for me. Her smile was brighter than the afternoon sun just beside her. My blood started pumping to a triple meter and in my heart I remembered that we were dancers. Memories of her elusive ball gown brushed against me as we waltzed across the tiled floor. Her smile never dropped as we revolved around the room. From a third-person distance, I saw us dancing near multiple couples, but the red dress of my partner stood closer to me than the seafaring blues and nightly purples of the other dancers. 

At the final swing of her swaying fabric, my heart departed from a triple counting beat and I re-entered my form on the bed. I instantly missed her. My arms sprouted ribbons from my fingers to redraw the shape of her as she would have stood next to me during our waltzes. Flowers budded on the parts of my skin that had been most vitalized by her touch.

As the global isolation enforcements were lifted, and I had less time for my bathing ritual, I lost touch with him and her. I was bored from the silence of their absence, until my unexplained attraction to patches of red brought me to the island where they once danced and he exploded. 

I miss you more than I miss myself. The recollection of our dances has poisoned me with a hallucinogenic state further amplified by my sensitivity to the rain and the stupidity of timeless days found near the equinox of spring. This will not make much sense to anyone other than you. 

The attempt of trying to reel out these pictures of you has pinched a spot at the center of my left palm and the bottom of my left foot. If I could have my way right now I would pierce them to let the blood draw out a sight for you which you could not place in space because of the brightness of its red. I would want us to stare at this overflowing pool together, as we sink into its fiery hue. It is begging to be done but I cannot. I do not have the proper bandages nor the skills to stitch up wounds and I know that eventually you would get tired of this scene and the amount of work it would take for you to ensure my livelihood with all I have released. So I shall preserve my blood within and draw with other spills for you. 

You miss me so much more than I miss myself.

I believe the last time I saw you was out of the door of a tank. The vehicle was about to move but we got to clasp each other’s forearms just once more before the soldiers took me with them. In my memory, your face stands out against all the shades of military green that were taking up the scene; single drop of something rosy amidst the conditions of the fly-sized empires and their severe disbelief in what they saw through microscopes and telescopes. I feel sorry for even having to associate you in proximity to such a thing. 

Now we know that time has never been linear. Not for me. But nor do I get to enjoy the completion of its circular form. Instead, I am placed in a layer cake; something like a canyon or a stratified rock formation with a lot more drip and ooze. I have stooped so far below my place of origin, but given that this cake is not affected by earthly gravity, I have just continued to move in all directions. I believe this is why you sense me now, although your set of beliefs greatly contributes to this as well. 

You miss me while continuously inventing me. You know about my battle and the way I bursted into a million pieces when the always imminent finally arrived. You did not cry because you did not want to. You did not feel like I was any further from you all along. You found other people to dance with when you heard about my rise to ashes. You brought flowers to the garden of stones and I came by and sniffed them. You went on to give birth to a blue and gold choleric, and she gave birth to me. She and I would often sit in our favorite posture, which you and I were taught by monks at school and our parents who reinforced it at dinner tables. Back then we lived in a place where the floors were properly padded, at least to protect the surface of our skin, but my mother and I had to find ways of granting ourselves permission towards this posture in settings not readily equipped, resulting in blistering kisses on our ankles, shins and knees. We were the only ones in our new found bloodline to sit like this. The only ones of our friends in this culture. We took this seated position in dedicated searches for silences, and it was our natural inclination in casual settings too.

Because of the transmission of history and the hijacked waves of culture, my mother has been frightened, only until recently, to return to the place where you and I first met. She’s confused about the point in which that battle took place, and cannot forgive the empire for her understanding of my shipment. But the grip of her oblivion is loosening, along with her conditioning to link her manners and affinities to some sedimented sources, rather than the drops of cake that I can taste on her so well. Her way with a sword resembles yours and her palette for fish can only be a result of being fed your diet in the womb.