May 30, Response to drives, energy discharges and mother

I slammed my knees to the ground to feel the small pebbles, the old dirt and the tufts of crab apple grass dig into the flesh there and remind me. I set the bucket down beside me, the water sloshed and wet the ground.

The water was placental, dragging my hand through the bucket, the warmth amplified the volume and made it viscous and home-like. I swirled the water round and round with increasing speed until the wet was a whirlpool, a portal opening to the bottom of the bucket and revealing, through the tube, how hollow and empty it was, but even so, it had collected some of the earth into its plastic skin and offered a semblance of life, cool-toned blue and ragged from years of use. I wanted to collapse into it, to succumb to the pulling force, the sucking, the downward grave-ness the spiral created.

The knees pulled my body back to the ground, where it had never left. It was wet from the rain last night and alive with the bodies of insects and arachnids. I had a peculiar smell, like bulbs of onions pulled freshly from the earth and particles clinging to the skin of the vegetable, sulfurous and pungent.

I spread the cleaning solvent over the decaying granite, feeling the rough crystalline structure of the rock face, watching the solvent and the lichen interact. Dipping the sponge into the still warm water, I squeezed out the excess and felt the trickle returning to the bucket in something like shudders.

I leaned my body into the stone and rubbed the coarse side of the sponge back and forth across the surface. The friction rippled through me as I tried to scrub harder, to dig into the shallow crevices that spelled out my last name. Moving down the face, I came to the next name and the dates after that, barely traceable indentations in the rock.

I dipped the sponge again and drew it out of the bucket laden with water, cascading it over the surface of the tombstone. I scoured, grinding myself into the rock until it took pieces of me. Tiny and microscopic at first, a gentle sacrifice. I became greedy for the purification and ground my will into the rock until it yielded, stripping away layers of flesh that looked like, on the rock, overcooked pasta smashed with a thumb.

I scrubbed and scrubbed. Eventually the names and dates dissolved and blended with the background from which they had been cut. Terrified, I collapsed to the ground, landed on the wet earth, remembering the fecund smell of it, muted by the sterility of the grave yard.

Grave, the air was thin and blue, it was ultraviolet moving towards gamma. The earth held me, but it was cold.