Sari KrosinskyTHE MOSS ON THE STAIRS ISN'T CLIMBINGListen to the audio version.The sidewalks and bridges, the stone walls of our new city are growing, furred with moss. Mold spores black fronds
and nourishing. People tell me how brave I am, starting over like this. I don’t
I’ve been watching the last of the move-in bruises fade, the one that came not from boxes but my fist. The silhouette
of palm and pinky is faintest stain
You’d hoped the good sea air would heal me. It does. You hoped it would heal me * * * TOLLBOOTHS ON THE ROAD TO ADULTHOODListen to the audio version.For my 14th birthday, I decided it was time to stop sucking my thumb. The stars slipped over Albuquerque through the window of my brother’s car—so many more of them 24 years ago, if memory hasn’t multiplied and magnified their light, the way my senses magnify every soundwave, every photon, every touch—and I smiled in grim concession to what everyone said growing up meant. For my 38th birthday, I’m still not sure growing up is anything I want to do. In the transit center where buses and vents pour an airfall louder than water could ever pound bare rock, unable to soothe myself with thumb navigating stalagmite teeth to find and fit the slick cavern dome, I anchor my fingers in the sheer rock of my arm, excavate five bruises before I know I’m hurting myself. To stick fingers in mouth like a baby at a bus station would be humiliating. The bruises, hidden by my sleeve, are all grown up.
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