She vacuums every day, suctioning up spider strands and dust that clings to the edge of the wall. Each week, she reorganizes men’s lives like her sock drawer and laughs joyfully. Slithering in her skin, she is fate, destiny inescapable even by us. Wyrd: the one we’re all named for—the oldest absorbs us all.
She dreaded babysitting us when our parents left despite practically raising us; changing diapers, teaching us to speak, enticing us to prank calls, leading us, eventually, beyond the law of time: we became the past and the future, we became active fate by collaborating together. Wyrd taught me the art of walking and waking. My first memory is of her cleaning out my ears with her long un-filed nails as my head lay cushioned in her lap. Every six weeks she ushered us into the bathroom where she trimmed our hair with dull shears. We looked in the mirror after she cleaned the small blades and left the room expecting the worst, but each time—to my relief—my hair still framed my oval face (so different from her heart-shaped one!) coquettishly. She told us how to live. When I disobeyed her, which occurred only once, she threw my handmade porcelain dolls against my bedroom wall. I forgave her to alleviate my own guilt—how could I disappoint her so much? She is a poem in process. She is tears before formulation. I wanted (want) to be her.
She was a little girl who happily introduced herself to strangers, the beautiful young woman strangers sought out, but now the whole world feels like strangers. Ageless, she never claimed childhood, resents her own youth. Wyrd is the mother of all strange phenomena: the sudden wind at night the love of two people, the gallant cause of an everyday coward. She is made of late and sleepless nights, worry for others. She’s compassion overspiced with cayenne pepper. Over-baked. She claims to harbor hate—yet anxiously prepares for neighborhood socials and long conversations. Her hate is a matter of loving too much. She insists on our nightly game of Pinochle. In the lamplight we relax, talk, compare notes, our fingers stained from frozen M&Ms, smearing the cards with artificial color.
Wyrd is the precursor and conclusion: the goddess without a temple, the gentle whisperer who nibbles lotus leaves as chewing gum. Wyrd bottle feeds those who wait upon her; they never know what nourishing poison they drink.
Time: 60 minutes plus some revisions
