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Edited on Sat Dec-06-08 06:40 AM by BlueIris
"The Preparation"
Go to the woman whose mother died young. She can tell you the downfall of self sufficiency. Take your worst day, move everything under it. Your heavens will be gray with the smog of toil, or if it's her determined jaw you want, take the file, begin edging off your own bone, your arms growing hard, angled, your eyes setting themselves deeply for the kill. This is the preparation. It is not like the hunter dousing his skin with urine, nor the thief, pulling the black shirt over his body. You need not pack provisions, nor send up prayers while you offer yourself broken, the head slumped and whispering meek verses as if from the mouth of a beggar. I tell you nothing prepares you for a mother crumpled on cold tile, gone in seconds on a night you were not home. Imagine yourself untended as the garden behind the empty house with crooked shutters. Your clothing will grow small, tattered, and no one will notice. This is the stumbling into loneliness, this is the sermon of a girl's knees tearing open, this child you will cling to with tired fingers. How you will hate to pull the woman's voice from your throat. You'd rather scrub scum from the bathroom floor, barehanded, without water. Do you feel what I tell you in the bone dust you are breathing? You will. It will be everything you never asked for.
—Tara Bray
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