Anything can be a time machine.
For us it was the elms grown crooked
into each other, knobby-rooted
& shooting nine-stories into the sky.
I named one Risen Again
for how it branched down into dirt
then up again, snakelike, hiding places
for me & the others. But it transported only meā
& Nieve. We could disappear
into its corkscrewed trunk & be two
places at once for Iād found a way to split
myself. What the grownups didnāt know:
enough to dredge the river
cemetery where weād play hide & seek
& never find. Enough to send us
where they no longer existed.
But the boy the color of an oak casket who
guarded me in the treeās clearing so I could cross
would no more make it to adulthood
than any of us. I knew that about him
& loved him anyway. What did it feel like, splitting?
Like ice pops against summer heat
bare feet scalding asphalt & eggs dropping
on sidewalk to test a theory. We fried
ourselves like sizzling pork fat plucked
from the comal & dipped in chile.
We held our whole bodies like a tree
after anyone had tried to chop it down.
A time machine can be anything
can be oneās own body. I used to catch rattlers
in the foothills for five bucks a snake.
Iād leash each snakeās neck so it couldnāt strike
then pinch between gloved fingers into a bag
for the exotic animal collector next door.
Splitting felt like that like that, like catching
but also getting caught. Whichever way I twisted
felt like shedding skin felt too tight.
Whichever way I turned felt like out.
