Salt Tooth
There is pain and discomfort. I become a black bride in a dirty aisle, endlessly walking towards some looped destiny. My feet and legs are aware of the balancing and the holding that is required to carry out the work. My shoulders ache and complain, and I become a yogi as I banish the complaining thoughts and ask my body for one more walk, one more walk, one more walk. I remember child birth and how I asked for one more contraction, one more contraction, one more hour, one more hour. This is a piece of cake compared to that. My arms and hands begin to numb. My head, inside, is alert. The skin of my face is irritated with small scratches, and the salt in these tiny scratches amplifies them. A stray lock of hair that blows across my sweating brow first tickles, then becomes a torment. Unable to wipe my face, I become aware of the way the sweat and the air meet one another and dry into a film.
Here I am the earnest worker, the one who must sort and store and stack and worry, and work and protect her young from the elements – this feeling of beating the heat – of being up before the dawn, to get the sticks moved before the savage sun takes the land. This feeling of a deep and nagging worry – to keep working, keep working, beyond all odds and beyond all reason just put dollars down, make the same tracks across the city. Go from home to work, go up the stairs, go down the stairs, make phone calls, place orders, get staff organised, get things clean, count the money, go home, do it all again, do it all again, do it all again. It is somehow important to keep on doing these things. The rhythm and repetition of this life of work and worry is both comforting and mesmerising and is a commitment of sorts – a commitment to an action.
Here I am the crusader - finding and expressing a deep anger, a feeling of injustice that women have lost something; some sacred thing; I want to reclaim it so badly for all of us – reclaim ownership over our bodies, respect for having those bodies, those bodies that heave and bulge and leak and moan and move and are moved – vessels and vehicles and destinations, desired and demonised. Under my skin, a deep current of anger for all women.
There is pain and discomfort. I become a black bride in a dirty aisle, endlessly walking towards some looped destiny. My feet and legs are aware of the balancing and the holding that is required to carry out the work. My shoulders ache and complain, and I become a yogi as I banish the complaining thoughts and ask my body for one more walk, one more walk, one more walk. I remember child birth and how I asked for one more contraction, one more contraction, one more hour, one more hour. This is a piece of cake compared to that. My arms and hands begin to numb. My head, inside, is alert. The skin of my face is irritated with small scratches, and the salt in these tiny scratches amplifies them. A stray lock of hair that blows across my sweating brow first tickles, then becomes a torment. Unable to wipe my face, I become aware of the way the sweat and the air meet one another and dry into a film.
Here I am the earnest worker, the one who must sort and store and stack and worry, and work and protect her young from the elements – this feeling of beating the heat – of being up before the dawn, to get the sticks moved before the savage sun takes the land. This feeling of a deep and nagging worry – to keep working, keep working, beyond all odds and beyond all reason just put dollars down, make the same tracks across the city. Go from home to work, go up the stairs, go down the stairs, make phone calls, place orders, get staff organised, get things clean, count the money, go home, do it all again, do it all again, do it all again. It is somehow important to keep on doing these things. The rhythm and repetition of this life of work and worry is both comforting and mesmerising and is a commitment of sorts – a commitment to an action.
Here I am the crusader - finding and expressing a deep anger, a feeling of injustice that women have lost something; some sacred thing; I want to reclaim it so badly for all of us – reclaim ownership over our bodies, respect for having those bodies, those bodies that heave and bulge and leak and moan and move and are moved – vessels and vehicles and destinations, desired and demonised. Under my skin, a deep current of anger for all women.
