She says…
She remembers being very sick when she was little
Her parents wanted her to sweat it out
So they wrapped her in blankets and heated the room
She sweated so much that it ran into her eyes
She had to close them.
She couldn’t see,
couldn’t speak
She didn’t know anybody who came to her
She was alone
She says she was very frightened
She remembers that inside her she could feel something growing
A small shoot sprouting out of her belly button
Reaching for the sun outside
Although her eyes were shut she could see and she was floating above her bed but her body wasn’t there. Instead there was someone else’s body in her bed. Someone else who wore her clothes, had her hair, and her mother came into the room and stroked the hair of this other person and said beautiful things to this body that wasn’t hers.
She wanted to cry out that this is not me!
She couldn’t speak because her mouth was filled with dirt and small shoots were growing out of it, rising up toward the sun that was streaming in through the window beside her bed. Instead of talking to her mother she turned her head and drifted out the window into the garden where she became like dirt and in her eyes she had grass growing and in her hair leaves and out of her ears flowers.
She remembers it was very nice.
