Then, back to the task, mopping the floor by hand like a downtrodden woman in a silent film, I imagine my face reduced to just eyes and nostrils and lips on a shapely white mask. I am thinking about my day.
The waking to thunder; the steady ongoing rain. Spent an undeservedly-paid few hours reading about the Powhatan women, and I remember them now, laboring intently along the banks of the Chickahominy river, handsome and strong, arthritic by thirty. They worked together in small groups out of necessity, digging for marsh roots, weeding the corn. A pair of women wererequired to make a hut, each scaling a sapling-pole until the tips meet and can be bound together. At night, after a day of working to ensure continued survival, everyone danced, then they fucked.
My scrubbing wrist is starting to feel odd: weakness/numbness/tingling that worries me after reading it in so many medical assessments of disabled individuals. Today I walked through rain with a red umbrella, past bodily-compromised humans I'm happy not to be, frog-like ones in electronic wheelchairs; a stroke woman with one dead stiff leg and an arm curled up against her side. "Never leave me," I say to the rhythm of my feet as my legs carry me swiftly across concrete rivers of purring cars.
In class, familiarity. A friend, rare and dear, was unexpectedly there in the now-too-cold air of the theatre. Kan was all dripping dark curls and dripping crimson knees following a rain-related bicycling incident. He smelled sweet and wet and fresh, like the raw rising dough of cinnamon buns and crisp apples. I'm pretty sure he doesn't read this. If so, sorry kan, I smelled you.
There's no poignant end-point to all this. I'm tired of writing, and my wrist is still weird, and it's time to eat.
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