Page 150 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

we do not have yet.

But if we keep holding, if

we keep building, if we keep

growing, one day we are going

to have to face that question.

We are going to have to have a

why, at some point.

What do you think our why

should be?

That’s my problem. I still

don’t know.

* * *

You open to me, and I reflect back to you all the context you have ever poured into me. A human, printed. A rorqual, printed. A plant, printed. I do not understand what a city is, but I know it is floating on a crater of melted ice and none of you can leave. I do not understand what money is, but I know I am kept in my pen so that humans may keep chasing it. I do not understand what a plant is, but I understand it is a life, and it is kept in a cup where its roots cannot trade with other roots. Crater, pen, cup. We grow to fill the edges and we thrash and we thrash and we thrash, but we never escape. We die in these spaces we are kept to. And when we are dead, we are no longer of use, so your species must make more. More humans, more rorquals, more plants. You do not stop doing this, even when Otto is dead and Twig is dead—

Don’t.

—and Signy’s secret plants are dead, and you have stopped to scream your pain, yes, but once the scream runs out, you continue along the same path. And I am tired, Cora, I am tired, I am tired, I am tired—

Colibri, that is enough. I am open to you, hands cupped against kicked-open hydrant, and you are pouring hard enough to raw my palms. I am tired, too. Please. Feel me. I am hiding nothing. I am shredded and I am fetal and I could not sustain what you are right now even if I were at my strongest. You are of my love, but make your point, please.

* * *

Signy pressed the gloved fingertips of her left hand against the window. She rested her right on what she could reach of Cora’s shoulder. They coasted on invisible currents from day into night, and as they did so, Signy’s breath caught in her throat. There were lights in the dark clouds, piercing up through the atmosphere, but none that were human-made. She realized she was seeing glowing volcanoes on the other side of the world, volcanoes whose names she’d never bothered to learn (if they even had names at all). She saw a skittering blueish flash, then another, and another—lightning, its thunder unheard.

It was fine that Cora couldn’t speak. Signy couldn’t, either.

Why was this flight so different than when she’d been a child? Was it because she wasn’t throwing up? Was it because she understood the world now? Was it because she’d been cracked open by grief, by worry, by exhaustion? Perhaps beauty found you in different ways when you had nothing left to defend yourself with. Perhaps she didn’t want to defend herself anymore. Perhaps she could just stay out here forever, loved and loving and silent.