What a thin, momentaryopeningeveryone passes through, this Itied to skin, this being betweentwo oblivions.—“Made in California” by David Hernandez
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Between two oblivions, there is the sea for certainbut it’s this body that forgets. Forgets what it was like to crawlout from the water for the first time. Forgets what it was liketo be an echo, stirring in the lukewarm water and primordial yeast
before my body rose into the shape of a manand asked for bread. As a child, I picked plumswith a rotten fist. Clenched them until the bloodran from my knuckles and my hand was pale
as the hungering moon. The juice ran down my wristand the taste was sweet. But the pit, the shriveledAdam’s apple of an old man, tasted of bitteralmonds. What life is there in the skin
stuck between naked teeth? I discardedancient seeds because the shell was hardand I did not know the catalystthat circles and binds the cracks.
When I see the roots of a tree bleedthrough the ground, now I say they are the veinsof my grandmother’s hands, spilling upward.I recall the tender bruises up and down her arms
and say I saw the sea rising through her skin.My brother was young and far from the oceanwhen he died. He overdosed on a couchin a basement in Ohio. But I’ve seen footage
of him at Thousand Steps Beach. A wavecrashes into a foaming cloud. He divesdeep below the wake. The video cutsbefore he can rise. When I look at the sea
he is still in it, swimming beneath the water.When the tide peels the skin of the shoreI feel how the self condenses, how it explodesinto a faceless cloud. When I sit on the bluff
above Alamitos Beach, I stare at the oceanand listen as my brother crashes against the sand.He whispers there, at the edge between two oblivions,that between life and death, there is only the shape
of a hand letting go. My fist ripensinto an open palm. I release the hoardedpit of my devoured plum.
The seed rolls back and returnsto the womb of my first mother.
Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash