#blue marrow

[cdnsongbirdme]

"We do not exist

except in the open mouth

of sky. No voices

dream our visions.

We fly in the blood of you,

my daughters."

— Louise Bernice Halfe, from Blue Marrow, qtd. in Daughters of the Deer by Danielle Daniel (Random House Canada, 2022)

[apr-jul]

Out of her top floor window now, streaks of light grey are appearing in a blue-grey sky; soon those will be followed by a pale orange hue. All these minute light changes she wants to collect. She likes walking at this hour. It's a new thrill for her. So much goes on before the distant city becomes fully awake. At first the city is misty, then phosphorescent, then it emerges skyskraping, glittering, a muted noise crossing the lake towards her.

Here, she spends the first wakeful hour of the day collecting these slivers of light, of tree, of water. She has a notebook. She's drawn columns in it and here, on weekends especially she makes notes as to each incremental change of the day. She's running out of names for blue and grey and green. Blue marrow, blue positions, blue speed, she's written, grey snare, grey freeze, grey grain. Green terminal, green engines. She ought to buy a camera, then she could set it at the window and take shots each minute. But then again, that would not quite do for what she needs. The camera would take the picture but she needs to moment to sink into her, to somehow become chemical, to metabolize, to reconstitute, yes, reconstitute her heart. When she looks back at her daily jottings, she realizes it's not recordable in words. She wants a more porous surface, where beauty can come into her, metamorphose, suffuse her skin.

love enough, dionne brand