All the Fierce Tethers by Lia Purpura

Author:Lia Purpura
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2019-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

THREE-LEGGED BRANCH

First came the sudden, light-struck feel of entering a meadow, though I was deep in the woods in Maine. The pines were thick, the green was black, the sun came only in spots through leaves, so the branch shining up in a little clearing caught and kindled who knows how. But there it was, leaning back, unabashed; stripped and smooth—a small branch with three legs and an ass wrenched around front.

There it was, propped in a split, two delicate legs off to the right, the left one longer and sturdier. At the center, that little crack—tender meridian of a peach, runnel in dirt fresh-cut by rain. Where the legs end and the feet would be are patches of bark like cuffed jeans. (I keep the branch right here on my sill.) One foot touches lightly down, tentative but charged and alert, like a divining rod drawing up the news from far in.

Those rightful three legs.

And what about them conjured the rightness?

The branch holds itself up as a body does, as I do in bed in the morning on elbows, facing the early light. That the curves of the ass move together so gently, then rise and break off where a waist would be, ought to disturb. And the footless legs. The defenselessness. The whole unprotected against stares and double-takes.

Ought to disturb but doesn’t. Why? Finding it there in the woods, that moment unfolded in time not-mine-alone. Offering/beckoning, both came at once. It wasn’t event, but en route and steep, like that spot at the edge of a cliff where you—wait.

If I tilt the branch up, the two-legged side poses the way I sometimes stand, one leg crossed over the other. I know how this looks—impatient, unstable, but try it: how good it feels to fight with discomfort for steadiness.

In the woods that morning, what steadied me? That I got offered a way to see—not in-spite-of-the-weirdness, or make-the-best-of-this-oddness, but the twisted body, its three-leggedness just unto itself. The ass in front, wrong-though-not. Not at all. More that the branch refuses wrongness, drains it away. And that it came this summer when so much else failed, when I didn’t know how to hold anything, and my life was burning. That I was moved to pick the branch up. Saw and reached down. Held and knew fast—not with the speed of efficiency, but an unequivocal snap-went-the-knowing.

Let me abide it, so sure in my body.

Abide what? Not the compensatory holiness of the cripple, endowed with spirit as consolation, given the keys to some far-off kingdom in exchange for whole limbs, and ever serving as a sign to us all—cue to be grateful, praise our strong bodies—not that shit. It’s the parts cohering as they will, in their way, throwing wide an embrace. No spectacle here, just invitation, ongoing. A thing come upon offered a way to see and be with.

And I saw and was with. We, each, were the site-of.

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