Grasshoppers crawl across your toes and up your legs. The jaguar man creeps beside you. From the sheer will to protect yourself, you furiously flatten a chunk of the paper sea into an armor plate then wait for his attack on you or her, you don’t know which, but the jaguar man remains crouched between thorny branches. The anticipation builds up a panic in you that makes you feel as if you’re drowning in the armor. The place in your body where screams are made is clogged with dread and seaweed.
You wonder if the girl in Ethiopia screamed. You wonder how many girls and women around the world scream or don’t scream. You fold a scream, and it drops like a shell to the bottom of the sea.
There is nowhere to go, and you can’t risk the jaguar man coming for you or her, taking you with one crushing bite. You close your eyes and call her once. You keep your eyes closed when you call but you feel a breeze against your chest. It’s either her coming to you or it isn’t. You pull with your teeth at the vines on your fingers until you loosen the vines and your fingers can bend.
You begin at your toes and fold them upward and over, then down and away, accordion style. Your hands are stiff but you manage to move up your legs, folding your legs along with whatever is stuck to them, salt and sand. You crease the edges with the heel of your hand to make sure the folds hold place. You fold yourself into a story.
You fold up your chest, and it’s true you don’t check to see if she’s there although you feel a brushing of wings or a tapping as if on a door you might want to enter. Then a deep breath, like wind from an ancient place, enters your body. You get the sensation of two friends sitting uncomfortably side-by-side, or maybe they’re generous or shy. It’s hard to describe things you’re still figuring out.
You keep folding along one arm, then your neck and head. You fold yourself into a sentence. You fold down the other arm to your final two fingers. You fold yourself into a single word that keeps changing.
X means compassion (for you and her).
For all the things I’ve done well, and all the things I haven’t.
X means love.
So big I have to change my life to comprehend it.
You fold yourself until there’s no she or you or him, no here and there, no jungle or sea, or jaguar or God. Until you’re all and none.
I used to be one person and then I was more. I, we, drifted in the water, bumping up against the shore, until we got caught on this vine of past and present and stayed here twisted on each other as the night shaped itself into morning.
MYTH. The end of the world, and the beginning of a new one, will come when a jaguar climbs up a vine into the sky and devours the stars and the moon.
Acknowledgments
Deep and abiding thanks to my agent Rayhané Sanders and editor Janet Ottenweller; to the team at Central Recovery Press including Nancy Schenck, Valerie Killeen, Patrick Hughes, and Eliza Tutellier; and to all the friends, family, and colleagues who have been so supportive of this project over the years.
The Jaguar Man Page 12
