Alpha

in the beginning

before Shy died.

When she was a child of no more than seven, she began to long for traveling rollerskating rinks she was yet to know existed. Circus tents of bright carmine and vivid sapphire pitching above smooth wooden floors that shone in the Texas sun. It was autumn, and she sunk into the season with glee and a soft grace that already spoke of her magic and lined the folds of her imagination. She hung plastic pumpkin buckets in the most modest of the front yard branches, and when the time was ripe she would delve into the scarf collection and cloak herself in labyrinths until she wore thin. In the trees she was at peace. Sometimes the air would get too thick and her throat would tighten, but up there, against the stains and curls of bark, she could see her veins more clearly beneath the youth of her skin.


When she learned how to roller blade, her body taught itself to move.
She slid her callused feet into the pads wedged between the gleaming plastic and streamlined strange driveways, catapulting and churning visions into asphalt battles. Her hours were injected into dimensions of pebbles and crystal mattresses beneath the sharp wooden starburst of home. The backyard forest of nonexistent broken bones and the berries;
the berries, that mystery of eternal clusters of
ever present red planet pomes
and lines and lines and
corners and droves
of...
borders.