Lizzy Burnam 🐞

On rainy days I close my eyes and wake up in  Sedona on a small mountain shaped like a pyramid. I’ve followed footprints off the trail to the apex where the sun beats hottest and directly overhead. I find the benben stone carved with images of octopi with human breasts and brass-brown eyes like mine. I pick it up and carry it like a child on my hip. The umber dust scratches my throat raw with every breath, rising and setting around me like a formless moon in my orbit. Cactus pines are stuck deep in the back of my thigh; I watch their poison travel under my skin, blue and sweet like Gatorade, aching through my veins. A creosote bush trembles and through it steps a peccary with a snake around its neck. I kneel to him, letting the sweat drip down my nose into the sand. 

I address him, shouting to be heard over the drum of my own heartbeat: “Javelina, where am I?” 

He stares me dead in the eye and says: “You are in Homer, Alaska. You were meant to land in Barrow.” 

“Javelina, what’s my name?” 

His snout flares with smoke, hot and wild above his drooling mouth, and he says: “You are Arisawe, both the curse and the promise of God. You were born up the creek in solitude. You are one of thousands of unfound women. You are one of thousands of unnamed men. You are the shadow’s wife. You are a skunk pig, like me.” 

He spits and where his saliva lands, a tiger lily blooms.