NEVER ANGELINE NORTH / 4 POEMS
NOTHING
Sara felt a great nothing building inside her, bigger than her whole body. It would take a tower of thousands of limp Saras stacked on top of one another to equal the size of this nothing.
Sara tried talking to the nothing, but to no avail. She tried writing about the nothing in the margins of her books, but the words wouldn't come out. She made arcane symbols and tattooed them across her arms and hands about this nothing, but still, it stood.
One day my nothing will be flooded with brackish water, Sara said to no one. It will slosh as I move and I will be full.
The ground beneath her trembled and a fox came to her from the trees.
I am like a green branch and you are bending me, said the fox. I will not break.
At that it scampered back into the trees.
Sara felt an echo as a droplet fell into the cavern of her nothing. Like the first bite of food after a day of hunger.
MACHINES
Sara kept finding out that people around her were machines. She would go to a store and talk to the clerk only to find out that he was a machine and he would start bending her arms. Sometimes machines would make her car pull over to the side of the road with their flashing lights just so they could bend her arms. Then they would send her to a building with machines staring at her from behind large panes of glass who would communicate with her in ways that bent her arms, that were still bending her arms as she tried to make her way home through tears that fell from the yellow sky.
Over the years all of Sara's friends became machines. One by one, they all bent her arms. Some parts of Sara herself even began to become a machine, began to bend her arms.
Sara's dog, who was not a machine, who was in fact the least machinelike thing Sara had ever met, was the one who showed her the water.
Machines hate this, Sara's dog said. They don't know what to do with it. It has no arms.
Sara put on the water and felt her arms unbend. She felt she could go on.
Thank you, dear doggie, she said, through tears that fell from the yellow sky.
SEASHELL
Sara came upon a seashell covered with ants. Something unseen touched her face.
Who was that? said Sara.
No response came. Sara looked at the shell more closely. The ants began to move onto her finger as she touched it. Something unseen brushed against her hair.
Ok, who was that? said Sara.
Again, there was no response. Sara looked around and saw nothing. She looked at her hand and the ants crawling up onto it, exploring the wrinkles of her skin. Something unseen made her think they were smoothing it out, like a sheet over a bed, like she would be young again.
Who was that? Sara said.
A square-shaped gap opened in the sky above her. Beyond was pure light, pure dark, pure nothing, pure everything.
Seriously, who was that?
The ants moved farther up her arm. Sara kept still. The seashell disappeared. The landscape dissolved. Sara stayed still, suspended in void, outside of time. The ants covered all of her. Sara disappeared, and all that was left was a shell of ants, perfectly Sara-shaped.
Who was that?
HOLY
Sara got stuck outside during a holy rain.
What makes you holy? she asked it.
What makes you think I’m holy? it replied.
It’s what you are, said Sara. You’re a holy rain.
It’s what you are, said the rain. You are the one who calls me holy.
The rain ate up the ground around Sara. The longer she was out in it, the less ground she had to stand on.
What is beneath this ground? said Sara. What am I about to fall into? Is it, too, holy?
It’s my job to eat away at the ground with my water, said the rain. I am not the one who goes around calling things holy.
Time sped up, then went backwards.
Is this moment holy? said the rain. Is the next?
Sara did not answer. She was too busy shivering in the wet cold. Too busy falling into where the ground no longer was.
Never Angeline North is a writer and artist living in Olympia, WA. She is online at undying.club.