Ambassador of Her Species

The gray-haired woman knows what she knows and is unafraid to translate should anyone care to listen. She sits on her porch half-hidden by a jungle thicket—lush lady palms, leggy arecas, pale pink bougainvillea arcing skyward like a fading comet. The air is a damp rag on her skin. She drinks tea, sometimes gin, plays gin, too, right hand against the left. It has been 187 days since the jack fell from the deck, and the house still stands. A neighbor sent a card, Keep Calm and Carry On, and the woman lit it on fire, watched as the paper burned and spiraled upward, traces disappearing. She knows well about “not being seen”. At the turning of each decade, she has reinvented herself on cue, keeping herself alive first for others, finally, for herself. The woman observes, then jots notes in her field guide, this extraordinary molting of responsible skin, a release of all that is mammalian. Curiosity gives way to understanding. She studies the lizards in her yard, the way they stare her down unblinking, the way they bask, still, under the radiant sun. Not a bad life, this last one.

Published in The MacGuffin, 2023