nestled in swirling chaos; pineal pinecone

           Both my Nana and my mother have blond hair…as a child I thought most women of European descent tended towards this color, this particular hue of straw, and threads of gold woven together. I had been somewhere as a nine year old, I was in the 4th grade and Laura Michonski was my best friend. To my dismay, her hair was this shade of blonde. Only her heart had scuff marks all over it, but I eventually could discern the difference between real diamonds and those that are solely cut glass.

            A diamond's crystalline structure is square in nature, whereas the true nature of life just might be spherical. I was dusting off the recess-debris from off my fourth grade sneakers. Laura was standing to my adjacent right, slightly behind me. “There are burs all over your back!” she said in her husky yet nasally voice, and I could feel her hand briskly swat away prickly rounded burs the size of marbles. I was envisioning Laura's mouth chock full of these things, mashing up against the softer parts of her mouth. The feeling of a hand clutching a fist of nails.

            Even then, I was somewhat conflicted and at odds with the shape of things. I tore up what was inside my body walls of flesh and other vicsera. I could have sworn I arrived at the party where Jeremy took off his coat in such a way that made me recall Humphrey Bogart, all these filaments touch me, I'm lost in that memory, take me back and let me know the bluest shade in the perilous sky, in scattered photons, in evergreen glades and coniferous trees. I often think that if I were small enough, I could hide in the crevices of each overlapping petal in a cone. Tiny, divining fingers.