the quiet divinity of logarithmic spirals, or: it all comes back
08/03/2025My cousin’s baby curls its fragile hand into a fist. It grabs with love. A fist has never become a punch and the only violence lies in the intensity of unconditional love. A snail lives in the hibiscus pot on my back porch.
When I was young, I collected snails in my grandmother’s garden. Her hands twist and curve, warped from giving. Her fingerprint is dizzying and I must come inside because of the heat. Crawfish wash up on shore and the lake water reeks of rotting mud and vibrant algae. There is a grave of dead snails under the dock. My socks are soaked and my grandpa leaves them to dry on the wooden bench he built years ago. It smells warm and is covered in deep knots. It’s my favorite spot to leave acorns for squirrels.
Now, it’s hurricane season and neighbors are pulling their shutters, tying knots.
In my memory your lips curl into a smile and there’s something sacred in your eyes. Anthems for a seventeen year-old girl spin in the air. I could reach out a grab them, but instead I stick out my tongue. They taste like inky words and blotted photographs.
My neighbor told me she saw three foxes playing together in our backyard three mornings ago. I pictured the cotton haze and a honeyed gold breaking through it, setting blaze to three fur coats, circling each other.
I have three hearts in my chest and one brain. Bloody valves push violent life through my veins and it all comes back. When we were young we fell asleep to coyotes howling. It sounded like a religious cry as the sun set over train tracks that carried things far away. I always wanted it to carry me. Now, as I board up my windows from the spiraled storm, my ears strain to hear a train that can take me north. To the coyotes that cry, to seventeen, to babies whose hands curl and pull with a love so uncontrollable it leaves bruises on mothers. Nothing comes, except for wind and the faint sound of foxes wailing. I think they carry a love that is too painful to whisper.
