The Next Number (writing to a prompt)
by Leigh Jordan
This is true — I have been a thousand women, or maybe two thousand, or maybe more than I can count. It depends on where I throw the line to divide one from the other. Sometimes the movement from one to another is like a bubble popping; sometimes like walking out of fog into brilliant sunlight; sometimes, sometimes there is no notification given. It’s so iffy. At times secretive. How can all those women live separately and yet together? But it’s so. Like a kaleidoscope each shift of the moments brings the tiny colored glass pieces into a new relation to one another, and magic. Magic is feminine. This has long been said. After all, who can bleed so much ripe blood every month and not die. Who can make another person? In only nine months. Or ever? Really, who? Say it. Me! You! By someone’s account we all should have been long dead. Not! It begs disbelief. We hold strong to our life-thread as we weave the scenes of our being. I want to remember my entirety in slo-mo. Not all happy faces, but all blessed. Some days I blow kisses to all those present, the long-bones of my life. Some days I hear the waves laughing, washing over the piebald sand and I can hear my daughter sigh in her sleep and I know goodness.
PROMPT (borrowed from @emoryhall on Instagram)
“i have been a thousand different women” (from Emory Hall's debut collection of poetry, Made of Rivers)
