Powder Puff (2022), Flora Yukhnovich
I ask and an answer comes: don’t force the light, don’t stare straight into the sun, close your eyes and let the sinister earth breathe through you, let the stubborn stones speak, millions of years and they didn’t shrink, crumbling is another way of reorganizing yourself, eroding is another way of smoothing rough edges, listening to the tides, waiting patiently for the day when this low berm becomes a tall cliff overlooking the wide ocean.
You won’t be here, but you’re here now. Don’t push the darkness out. Bask in the grim hours before daybreak, nervous squabbling among the wicked, look them in the eyes and don’t look away. Steady presence is another form of persuasion, silence is a stronghold against a riot of angry noise, a straight spine points to the center of the earth, a gesture that honors gravity, an alignment that says we rotate on this axis, we respect what came before us, we shape what comes once we’re long gone.
Be beautiful or be ugly, be a baby or be ancient, be humble or be haughty, choose grandiose embellishments or good penmanship, embrace obedience or revolt, form words or babble incoherently, crawl over shards of glass or fly low over smooth sand. You won’t be here but you’re here now. Choose a color and a shape, choose a texture and a rhythm, choose a low murmur of pain or a scream of delight.
This morning I scraped dog shit off the bottom of one of my running shoes with a very old, pink, glittery toothbrush that said GRANDMA on it. My mother’s mother used this sparkly toothbrush in her mouth when she lived here with us, at the end of free will, in her last hours of semi-independence and almost-coherence, and then her toothbrush landed in a plastic yogurt container under the sink, now it’s covered in shit in a trash bin outside the back door. GRANDMA told the best stories and got drunk and screamed at her husband and grew tall stalks of rhubarb and made feathery bird puppets with orange juice bottle lids for feet, feet that clattered and clapped on her old wood floors as the birds strutted across them, back and forth, around the old couch, over the piles of old books, beside the stray tissues and the coffee cups full of old coins and the small green bottles of Vapo-Rub wrapped in hundreds of rubber bands.
GRANDMA was too brilliant to be a wife, too big and wild to be a mother, too passionate to survive 1942, the year her four-year-old died of complications from the measles, three months after my mother was born. Did she carry her baby to the graveside or did she leave her at home? She had too much to carry, too much to endure without strong spirits to see her through, to guide her forward, to sterilize her veins. Choose a color and a shape, choose a texture and a rhythm, choose a sweet whisper or a howl of despair that echoes in your remaining babies until they’re eroding or stretching toward the sun, until they’re babbling or crawling over shards of glass or clattering across old wood floors or flying low over smooth sand.
Choose a chord, choose a phrase, choose a mood for the day, just know that every sound has an echo, no matter how small. Let these rageful woods break through your consciousness, let these resentful tides form words on your tongue, saying we will be here after you’re long gone, we will outlive your foolishness, we will watch your replacements arrive, full of love, clapping hands in delight, looking directly into the sun without blinking until they go blind.
The sun is rising in the East now, glowing in straight lines across still branches and silent tree trunks. Close your eyes and feel this axis straighten your spine, pointing to the molten core of this sphere, anguish and confusion spinning around you, faster and faster at the outer edges, blurring and dissolving into cold space. You’re here now at the center but you won’t be here for long, feel yourself dissolve to ash and bones and ancient artifacts under the sink, ancient artifacts covered in shit and rolled out to the curb, ancient artifacts crushed into plastic splinters in the trash truck, ancient plastic splinters decomposing under miles of sinister earth.
You’re here now. You shape what comes once you’re long gone. Feel her sadness and rage pulsing through your veins. Feel everything she refused to feel when she was here, until her mind recoiled from each moment, until her eyes scattered like frightened sparrows, until she repeated the last words she heard, repeating and repeating and repeating and then disappearing for good. You’re here now. Don’t sterilize your heart, don’t blame the weak for your strength, don’t tell stories washed clean of fury and grief and pure, unbearable love. Carry everything until your knees buckle. Falling to pieces is another way of rising to greet the sky.
Thanks for reading Ask Molly.
This speaks to me in ways I'm sure you never intended. My God, that is powerful.
Thank you.
Painting with words, light and shadow, no judgment in colors. You’re becoming my religion.
The most terrifying: you won’t be here for long. Brilliant.