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When the psyche revisits past selves it does not breathe easy. Too many hearts overlap our present, the body left but loose anchor, buffered by an accumulation of memory. A blank street is so much more immediate than this page for how it attends the stock fear of appearing — by angled shoulder, swung walk — too feminine. A target. The trajectory of an image shifts between knowing and not knowing. That night my calculated risk, my walk home, stole all. Each previous and potential self was packed away. I was quick and vehement with my lack of warning; to let any linger was to chance losing her absolutely, tip to toe. This: the still trauma lobbies, the web of gravel that laced my knees I knew would be an end — either way — to that perennial chase. I could not summon the habitual ferocity. And the only thing to do with the shock of striking home was to strip naked, to check and re-check my face in the bathroom mirror as each layer peeled away. As they drove beside me, as ten minutes later they parked the station wagon, took steps, they murmured: you are beautiful, from where?
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