a brief interlude

The PUBLIC sign outside of my window is pink with soft sunlight right now. Part of me wants to run outside to see what that means for the clouds, but I am too cold and too depleted to rush back into all of my layers before the light gets lost. I’m working on an essay that I wanted to publish yesterday but couldn’t get right and I had a long day at work.

Last week, I noticed my ~interdigital folds¹~ were dry and cracked. Flecks of skin peeled off between my fingers, slicing into my palm. Today, it felt painful and my hand became stiff. The dryness crept down toward my knuckles: inflamed and scaly ridges, ready to fight me when I make a fist. The joints on my right arm started to ache and contract, like whatever it was was creeping upward. Wrist. Elbow. Shoulder.

I ran outside to breathe in my paint-splattered white t-shirt, arms bare to the wind, gaze up toward the blue sky seeking spaciousness. Oxygen felt so good I hardly registered the cold. When I walked back inside, I barreled into my coworkers’ arms, tears streaming. They sat me down, offered me water and wet towels and aquaphor. “Of course your hands are dry!” they said, and I laughed. I knew my tears were only a little bit about the eczema I may or may not have developed, and more about Osa, about whom I thought in every free moment yesterday and today, and more about Ayan, whose absence finally feels glaring, even though I don’t want to see him, don’t want to talk to him, certainly cannot go crawling back to crying about eczema on my knuckles.

“Grandma Nathalie, why do I have hives AND eczema?”

“Well, sweet granddaughter, it’s because I and I alone don’t know how to handle my stress and so it eats away at my skin before it carves something out of my soul.”

In the end, I ran outside before the pink light faded and it was breathtaking. It let something loose in my chest. When I think about the woman I want to be², she is someone who catches the sunset and holds it, knows it as medicine and magic. The essay I’m trying to get right will follow, even when I give myself a moment to appreciate something as special as a sunset.

1. I love to be anatomically/linguistically exact but I feel some type of way about this.

2. this is how I’m making decisions these days, often checking in with myself to the tune of Ex-Factor by Lauryn Hill. ♪ “Tell me, who I want to be” ♪