Healing Machine for Maria
For the fear of losing touch with your dreams
The only visible part of the machine, if you could even call it that, is the flock of wild turkeys outside your window. Your baby is out there barefoot, digging with a stick, and you stand by the door with your feet in the grass, wishing you could go back inside to finish the story you’ve been trying to work on for months.
The turkeys surround her, unafraid, and when she cuts the air with her arms like a conductor, they swirl in a perfect eddy around her, pecking bugs out of the grass with great intensity. Somehow, you don’t worry that they’ll peck her eyes out. You suspect they’ve been in direct communication with her ever since she was born. When they’re gone, you can see all the places in the dug-up dirt where the bugs used to be, because the earth there is glowing with a thick orange light. It doesn’t make you think of magic, but of the Edison bulbs at a West Village bar you haven’t been to in years. You put your ear to the ground and you can hear the familiar hum of human voices.
You don’t need a shovel to figure out what’s one layer deeper, but you get one anyway, and a spoon for the baby. You dig together, flinging soil over your shoulders like gravediggers, or maybe grave robbers. There, just as you suspected, is every story you’ve ever written, the pages soaking in the darkness of the underworld, blaring violent light.