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TITLE: Phantom Limb
AUTHOR: Kita
RATING: PG
Phantom Limb
i.
On the day she runs past you, you go with her.
Fuck o’ clock in the morning; the sky is the same faded gray as her yoga pants.
Sun Salutations, you think. Downward dog. Child’s pose.
Two years of lessons with her and those are the only poses you've
mastered. You worked hard on Tree Position, flat of your heel pressed
into one thigh, your palm pressed flat against hers.
She stood there, tall and strong.
You never could get the balance right.
Everything that’s hers now is piled in the back seat of her car.
Six years stuffed into boxes and bungee cords. You can’t see a
thing through the rear view.
The only way to look is ahead.
ii.
She wants something new.
“How do I look?” she asks, twirling in front of you in a
black suede cowboy hat. It’s the fifteenth hat she’s tried
on, and it’s huge, the edges curling up around her face.
“Like Foghorn Leghorn in a bad after school special about racism.”
She’s the only one in the little Winnemucca family shop who
laughs. You wonder if they think it would be impolite, to laugh at the
funny looking Jew girl in her Snoopy PJ’s, and the dykey looking
Asian girl in a ten gallon hat.
Or maybe, they just don’t get the joke.
“That’s a two-hundred dollar hat, babe,” you say as ‘Mother’ rings you up.
“How do I look?” she asks you again.
“Beautiful.”
iii.
Salt Lake City rises like Zion after the endless desert of Nevada.
“Well,” you say, “I can see why the Mormons stopped here.”
She smiles at you. “I’m pretty sure they were coming from the other way, actually.”
“Oh.” You’ve never had a sense of direction.
The roads are shouldered with an endless sea of white. You think of
pillars, of Lot’s wife, punished for breaking the rules of love
and family, for daring to want both what was behind and ahead.
It’s strangely easy to get drunk in Utah.
iv.
On the day she runs past you, she drives you to the airport.
She means to let you out at the curb, but she climbs out of the car,
and collides against you on the sidewalk. Her kiss tastes like smoke
and candy and tears, like places you never quite made it to together,
but somehow still miss.
Her hands are strong on your hips, and you press your mouth to her forehead. She stops shaking.
When you open your eyes over her shoulder, there’s a woman,
watching you both. The woman frowns, covers her daughter’s eyes,
turns her around.
“Look away,” she says. Look away.
-end
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-Almighty!GAH 6/05
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