this morning (like and unlike other mornings)

we've crossed again and we walk across a street full of cracks passed a man who looks at me long. hard. i move closer to the man that brought me here feeling safer when I surrender to a faster pace the sky is red although... we're still so close (my hand reaches farther. deeper. as I point...) razor wire and sunflowers send their secrets into my hair i pull them out and hold them in the bags under my eyes in the dirt under my pinky nails in the corners of my smile we move through silence and half light where color used to live where color still plays its game where flowers grow and pick themselves and dogs go to war (I lunge away as one tries to swallow me there's laughter in my fear tight. embarrassed.) with each passing block the city's sounds get softer as the light bounces through the streets a girl and boy are in love a disco rolls by us on two wheels, pulling a carriage full of boys homes are fortresses the street a tunnel. Everything begins to echo as I begin to float again. Time is stopping now. the world sits with me like a tree stump I stretch my fingers breathing long into the night as the sky begins to change... the sky is red although... we're still so close (my hand reaches farther. deeper. as I point...) an exhale. i feel unafraid. steady. sailing... between everywhere and here. "only seeds" is an action that explores personhood on a 21st century border. The action will bring to life a person's right to grow no matter where they are from, no matter where they are. You can read the project statement here. from the journal: This morning I woke up dizzy, my pinky toes both numb and raw. I lay next to my baby girl, unsure of where or when I was. My hair was still tied up in a pony tail heavy as it hung off the bed. I had fallen asleep in yesterday's clothes. I checked the cracks in the light from the window to try to see when we were. The sunlight was bright. I sat up and looked down at my feet... beautiful, perfectly round blisters on four of ten toes. I forgot to wear socks the night before... I stretched and walked out of my girl's room, smiling for the intense limbo I was walking through. I had returned, for the second time, to Juarez the night before to explore. sit. smile. wonder. wander. My friend invited me to go along on the type of adventure dreams are made of. Simple. Unassuming. Maybe absurd if you don't understand. We crossed the Stanton Street bridge this time to get to his cousin's house. There was no crash landing. No wall of sound. Only corridors. Fencing, Orange light. Loneliness. Almost... silence. It was a Monday and the streets were empty. It felt as though our two voices were the only sounds in space as we walked quickly over and out of the bridge. The walk to the house was only a handful of blocks. After the third, my heart and mind had convinced me that we were miles away from "home". My friend's voice stayed the metronome as he shared stories of the neighborhood. I wanted to take each story, each memory, and make it mine, as we walked through silence and the shifting light of the evening. We passed crumbling walls and more buildings... destroyed. I couldn't help but stop and look through the fencing. Piles of rubbish and all I saw was evidence... time... memory. I looked carefully everywhere as we moved farther into the neighborhood. We passed a street my mother named me after and I stopped to have my picture taken. Too nervous. I could feel my face contorting. It was so so quiet. Only one other time in my life have I felt two such opposing things simultaneously. (I was floating on my back down a river at the foot of the Himalayas. I had walked through piles of human shit in a Nepalese labor camp on the border of India and Bhutan, to get to the massive river that poured sacred water from the mountains. As I went floating, the Indian sun set over the last ridge of the Himalayas. To this day, I still can't believe it was real. My toes, my arms, my whole self was alive. And I was so fucking small. And still felt so infinite. And my notion of beauty was completely inconsiderate.) We kept walking and eventually turned left so I could see what I now believe is one of the world's most beautiful homes. A white house tucked safely away in the middle of a block. I wanted to look at it for the rest of the night. I wanted to build my very own life in it. Right there. In that neighborhood. That was the second time that night I wanted what could never be mine. We turned and walked back up the block and then a little farther. Within moments the "thing" my friend's mission was about was finished as I stood outside his cousin's house. Watching razor wire cut through the sky, I imagined myself sitting on the balcony across the street, sipping bourbon, writing stories, dancing with my girl, watching the world. Barefoot. Home. Within moments, time went jerking forward and suddenly we were driving in a car. I had felt suspended in midair until that moment. The city flashed by as I tried to speed up again. I recognized everything. We laughed as we roared by the Walmart that used to be a bull fighting ring. My brain said "how... why..." We landed at a small coffee shop with a perfect window. I sat with my feet perched up against the glass. I had found my magnifying glass. My mirror. The sound of the coffee shop faded completely into the background as I tried to turn myself into the window. We talked about our normal lives and our normal things as I watched this other world move on the other side of the window. For a second time, I wanted more than anything to stay. Right there. But night was coming and we had to get home. (The razor wire is real.) We roared back alongside a bus with the world's most amazing fonts on its sides. Hand painted. We passed the places we had walked by the first time we were visitors. I smiled and begged my heart to let go of this place. Of this world. (There would soon be a giant metal fence between my heart and this place.) As we got closer to the house, closer to our return, I felt my guts tying themselves around me. I felt at home. A part of it all. I couldn't tell which place or time or space was the part when I return. We got back to the house and my friend's aunt came outside to let us in the gate and then to take us to the bridge. That was when I saw it. The sky was red from where we stood. I pointed and felt my body surrender as it exhaled downward. We were still so close to home. My lips wanted so badly to find a way to say it... The "worlds" aren't far enough apart to change the sky.