Fruiting Body — Abby Buchanan

Hi.Nice to meet you.Let’s be friends.You remind me of someoneI’ve known beforebutcan’tquiteplacefromwhen.I think it’s my best friend—the little girl I played pretend with,who was motherless like me,whose lunch I packedwhile she packed mine.Then we taught ourselves to be pretty,to wear makeup,to buy bras,and steeled ourselvesso we’d be readyto help our real moms stop cryingif they ever got up off the floor.Wait.You do remind me ofthe girl I hated in 5th grade.The bossy one I could never compete with,with better roller skatesand older friends.Or maybeit’s the girl I stood within a tiny churchoutside Alamogordoflanking our friend,the teenage bride.That entire wedding party was too young to vote.And we all stood a little too close to the altar,our hairspray-laden updosstarting to smokethe closer we got to theflames.You remind me ofa roommate I had once.The oneI held tightas we hurled ourselvesinto adulthood.The one who was waiting up for mewhen I came home in the middle of the nightdrunk on oxytocinand beer,neck rubbed rawfrom my new boyfriend’s stubble,the one I’d marry 8 months later.Nevermind.You remind me of a womanI knew when our boys were tiny.We would talk for hours on the couchabout how to keep our babies alive,how we couldn’t remember lifebefore them.How we knew our lives were too smallbut it was ok—mostly becauseit had to be.Or maybeit’s the woman in the restaurant.The one who saved my life witha dinner knife anda swift cut to the trachea.The words were stuck.I was choking to death.So she cut.Decisive,even though I know her hands were shaking.And it hurt like hellbut I did not die.You remind me ofthe one who capsized the boatfirst,eyes fixedon the churning horizon,pulling herself forward.The onewho strapped herself into a rocketand flewuntil all that remainedwas a faint glow,the soft outline of a spaceshe’d once inhabited.Or maybeyou remind meof the woman I knew last fall.She made it look likesorcery,forming a new worldfrom nothing but dustand the grit beneath her nails.Assembling and animating itwith her breath.But I heard her crying in the RV at night.And I knewshe’d asked for her privacy,and the pain was hers not mine,so I criedand criedwith herstanding just outside.Wait.I think it’s the orca I swam beside for years,raised together in the icy water.We shared currents,borrowing each other’s momentum,till we became the matriarchs,the pod in our wake.No.It’s definitely Joan of Arcwho reminds me of you.The one who liberated herself and showed me how.The one who couldn’t wait for mebut never stopped leaving signs,dropping feathers,snapping twigs,always hoping we would meet againa little way down the road.