The Child Who Collects Shadows (2)
Notes from the Abundant Deprivation Zone
A child in a hospital ward asks if clouds are edible, and suddenly we understand everything about what humans do to each other. This collection begins with testimony from a hunger ward where mothers dissolve themselves gram by gram to keep their babies alive one more day. It becomes a play where actors fold paper cranes from medical forms because beauty insists on happening anyway. Then it fractures into fevered fragments—the way a mind actually sounds when it's witnessing the unthinkable. This isn't writing about trauma; this is writing from inside trauma's own grammar.
Right now, as we watch genocide through phone screens, arguing about words while children starve, this work does what journalism can't: it makes us feel the weight of a disappearing child, the taste of remembered bread, the sound of a nurse crying while she puts on lipstick because that small act of dignity is all she has left. The fragments don't cohere because reality itself has stopped cohering. The repetitions circle like someone in shock. The questions—"Are clouds edible?" "How did we arrive here?"—hang unanswered because some questions are accusations dressed as curiosity.
This is necessary literature, the kind that changes how you breathe after reading it. It refuses to make atrocity poetic or bearable. Instead, it shows us exactly how love continues in conditions designed to kill it: a man guards a seed in his pocket, nurses share a single piece of gum, someone waters plastic plants every day. These aren't metaphors. This is what survival looks like when even survival seems obscene.
fragments/wind/ruins—picking up setting down but WHO'S PICKING? whose hands?
the birds aren't birds they're ribs they're—no wait they're
the SOUND of birds that were never there wings beating like broken fans against
heat thick as yesterday's bread
mosaic (tiles?) but the tiles are BREATHING each mother dissolving gram by gram by
gram becomes
tile
crack
the space where GOD LIVES?
no the space where hunger lives
same thing?
bread-checking gentle press but my fingers go THROUGH like it's made of clouds
hollow sound means done but done means what? the bread has a fever
the bread is counting ribs one two three four five—
STOP
the bread is not a baby
(or is it?)
"Sweet Heart?"
(who said that? the walls? the olive tree growing INSIDE the hospital now?)
(tenderness breaking through like that nurse's lipstick but the lipstick is SINGING)
(old commercial jingles about abundance we can't remember tasting)
obsession with titles = obsession with names = obsession with
IF WE NAME IT DOES IT BECOME REAL?
IF WE DON'T NAME IT DOES IT DISAPPEAR?
paper cranes multiply in the corners when no one's watching I swear I saw them
moving like—
repetitions repetitions repetitions:
When Food and Water Become...GHOSTS
When Food and Water Become...YESTERDAY
When Food and Water Become...THE QUESTION ITSELF
(meditation? prayer? fever dream? all three dancing but one has no feet)
caught between worlds means
one foot in the hunger ward |
one foot in someone's golf game |
spine stretched like pulled taffy but the taffy REMEMBERS being sugar
WHERE DO THE WORDS LIVE?
(in the space between the olive tree's exposed roots)
(in the child's clenched fist)
(in the spinning wedding ring getting bigger bigger bigger until—)
the child asks if clouds are edible
I forgot to answer
been three days? three years?
the clouds taste like cotton candy like memory like—
some questions are eggs but these eggs contain:
- innocence (clear as water we don't have)
- hunger (yellow as the sun that won't stop watching)
- imagination (that membrane is PERMEABLE everything leaks through)
- impossibility (the shell we crack but it's already cracked from the inside)
shattered mirror but I keep seeing the same face in every piece
whose face?
the mother? the child? the tree?
unbearable light unbearable light unbearable
(but we bear it HOW do we bear it we become transparent we become—)
bridges readers can cross but THE BRIDGE IS SWAYING
and below? not water but the sound of empty stomachs harmonizing
honest about destinations but the destination KEEPS MOVING
the morgue becomes a garden becomes a golf course becomes—
clinical/sacred (kissing behind the IV stand)
precision/mystery (the exact weight of a soul leaving)
beauty/horror (same face different angle)
(not opposites but the same thing wearing different clothes)
that nurse with the lipstick—
I think she's painting the walls now
red slashes everywhere like signatures like—
(why do I taste pomegranates?)
(why do pomegranates taste like tears?)
writer's eternal challenge but ETERNAL is a lie everything ends even
this sentence will end even this thought will—
serve truth AND hope?
they're not different things they're both
folded into the same paper crane CAN'T YOU SEE IT?
your fragments doing the work but THE WORK is delirious too
THE WORK has a fever
THE WORK dreams of bread so vivid it wakes up chewing—
continue continue but continue WHERE?
in circles?
in spirals?
in the shape of a child's question mark?
trusting the broken because the broken is all we—
trusting the spaces because the spaces are where—
trusting questions because questions are—
are clouds edible?
are clouds real?
are we clouds?
is this the cloud?
(the question stands alone)
(but it's swaying)
(like everything here)
(perfect in its delicious impossibility)
wait—delicious? I meant delirious
or did I?
