The Liminal Space

I wish I could
tell you how it feels to be obsessed or enthralled or... enchanted by
something so intoxicating as She, but I'll start from about as far
back as I can remember. That day was the hottest on record in a
decade where every new hot day was a record, it felt oppressive to
wear skin or hair - to have the audacity to expect yourself or anyone
else to wear clothes, despite the inescapable feeling of the
consuming heat, we powered through. It was a Sunday and as a good
Southerner does, my momma and I sat on the pews in church and fanned
ourselves with pretty ineffectual wicker fans made by the local
church ladies on one of their "weekends for Jesus" or whatever
they were called. When the sermons were done, we and the other Sunday
church folks pulled our hot, sticky skin from the seats and piled out
of the door to walk down to the quarry. I was younger then, though I
don't remember how young - too many things have altered my
perception of time and space, but I remember feeling deathless and
invincible to teenage years seem to be the appropriate estimate.
Momma and I held hands on our way down - she carried a picnic basket
in one hand that I remember because I can still smell the aroma of
rhubarb and honey wafting up as the thick breeze wrapped us in it's
arms. As we turned down the road by the church, we saw it er, rather,
Her.

The crunch of the wicker basket and our fans hitting
the gravel road still rings in my ears. The only thing I saw was a
purple miasma engulfing me - it pulsated and glowed and cooled me,
like it was the perfect temperature and in it, I saw Her. I can't
describe what She looked like, I don't know if She looked like
anything at all, but Her voice lingers in me, how melodic it was -
like a call from God Itself. She showed me Her sadness, how upset She
was that the life She created was dying, how important I would be to
Her plan and then I was gone - liminal. Not around but not gone.


Like an oil slick, the most beautiful and tragic thing I've seen.
She told me when She made God and how It looked birthing infinity -
We lived in that infinity with no one to tell us Our ages or the
time. I knew the look on my momma's face the day I was born, like
she saw me drifting, like she saw what I was meant for in my grey
eyes. Everything and everyone froze on that day, it was just Her and
I - weeping into the lake by the docks, kissing the dead fish back to
life. She kissed me back to life. I was lost to Earth and Her pain
before She came back, to erase the pain and undo the ravaging on the
rivers of humanity. She told me I was like Her but I think I'm too
human, I think I miss it too much to be so ethereal as She. My momma
is frozen there in time - She promised it didn't hurt because
momma's time wasn't moving anymore, it was over. I go back there
sometimes to brush her thick, curly hair out of her face or hold her
hand. She looks peaceful, like the day I was born and everything
moved faster than light. It was always our fate to be far away, it
was always mine to be the Timeless being She made me. Momma was only
meant to be mine for a little while, but mommas always know when
their babies are meant to leave.