​Because I Am
Emma Hardison


She, a thin hushed gold, chopped the ripe kiss in half and threw her piece, the part with the core, into the bluff. In this new universe without it, the ocean is shallow just like the old one. Both of our lives were on concrete but right then we were on sand, her eyes looked like a different color than they are in the city.

Sick dogs, sick daughters, sick doctors

When I was eleven my hair got so tangled that I cried while brushing it. My mother came in and took the brush from me and left the room. She came back with detangler from my cousin’s bathroom. It was called Tangle Tamer and said No Tears on it. She sprayed it into the kelp forest on my head, running her fingers through it over and over. I breathed in the mist and fished for myself.

in your fingertips and the base of your throat

There is a place in New York that I adore. I have never been there, but it believes that numbers are numbers and that each penny dropped is a dime found. A river runs right outside my apartment and I have never been swept into it. It is the coldest thing that will ever touch me and the warm girls across the river wear pink tank tops. I do too but also a fur coat because it snows there.

She scooped up a handful of mud and said, “This will be blood one day.”
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I kick myself slowly into the bay and my skin gathers and aches and shivers. My body is held, softly with a hint of grapefruit, by the spirit that the lady with the face tattoo told me about when she read my palm. She had tapped the end of a skinny line in the center of my palm and asked “Did someone close to you die during your childhood?” And I said “Yeah.” She nodded and said “Because you have a heavenly spirit with you.” Do my hands change when people die or are their deaths always in my hands?
 
 
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