American Beech

Abstract

I don’t mind when she approaches me, a strangeron North Walnut Street, who only tells me about what shesees while reaching two fingers in to retrieveit from my hair. She squints a bit, fights the menaceof hot, silver, Hoosier sun, and relieves me of a problemthat, for her, rests too close to me. A deep plunge into mycurls, I wait to see how far she goes, and because Imiss the hands of the women I know, I think I’d evenlet her hook her unfamiliar fingers into the lace of my wig, but she stops short of me feeling completely like home.It is an American Beech leaf, green as green, as opposite of red;she pulls this weightless raft from inside the crown of me.In small-town, downtown, there is a woman who doesnot know my name, but calls herself my mirror. Haptic grace.She holds the leaf to my face, then releases it to flow slowlydown the vertical river of air to the pewter concrete. I don’t mindwhen she approaches me, a stranger on North Walnut Street,taking a leaf, leaving her fingerprints, to sing and sing and singso close to our skin until I hear my own voice say: I feel you, too. Howmighty. The God portal of human touch.