In an estranged valley, papercut between the Sierras and an indulgent coastline, I found a Giant.
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In my hotel room the air conditioner hums until I feel like a stranded fish, my eye sockets hollowed and gills all dried out. I choke and gasp on the sanitized air. In front of the window hang three layers of curtains, a fortified wall against any morning light, but no protection against the drone of the freeway. Laying in bed beside the red letter alarm clock I feel as though I am a hard chestnut rolled up in a green coat or lying in a metal bowl on the counter.
Evening pulls across the basin quickly, throwing its shoulders over the mountains and swallowing the parched land. Before it gets too dark I walk out to the dusty strip of land behind my hotel. The ground here is dotted with crushed cans, cigarette butts, and clovers. I drag my heels around in the dirt until I find a spot with more give, where the ground seems to press down a little. Brushing away the larger rocks and trash I uncover the edge of a face. A forehead, so high and pink, the size of a car.
Back in my room, my friend sends me a photo of a piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball. In the photo the ice chunk lays in her hand, some of it beginning to melt and pool in the cracks and lines of her palm. Looking at this picture is like looking at pictures of tenderness or violence- I feel my body react without explanation.
That night I dream of an early spring, and in the southern dust - a sleeping Giant, cradled by sulfur and sediment. A forehead, so high and pink, like an anvil. Strike now.
When I wake up, my face is wet.
Two days pass without incident or note.
The third night, something prods me awake at 3am and holds me in silent terror until daybreak.
That evening I return to the dirt patch. The light folds in the late sky like one of those red foil fortune telling fish. Fortune indicates: the light is fickle and jealous. It scuttles across the dirt like a small creature, glinting off of passing cars and winking until its final retreat to the horizon. Of the land splayed before me, I march through the refuse, back to the soft spot. The dirt puckers where it meets itself, leaving an opening through which I glimpse the skin of the Giant. Despite it being winter, the days have been hot and onerous. I wonder how the body changes under differing duress - sun punishing the Giants back and poisoning the fish.
That night, I dream of an early spring and that the Giant is the size of a ping pong ball. The Giant lays in my hand, beginning to melt and pool in the cracks and lines of my palm. In the dream, its voice is slow-moving, rolling over me like oil. Tenderness and violence.
The Giant tells me,
“Even if your heart is a gash as big as a boulder, even if you tell me that your love is a gash as big as a boulder, I know that it is a small river stone. Smoothed, rendered practical in its own way. The stone is not yawning enough. It does not eat the path open. It has no entropy.”
The Giant continues,
“There is something that will hold you like the dirt hugs dried bones underground. I watch video games and tv shows by peering into the neighborhood living rooms. This has no entropy, like the river stone. I am like the dirt holding the dried bones underground.”
Despite the multi layered curtain system, a thin blade of light falls across the bed in the morning and wakes me. My face is wet. In the lines of my palm - a puddle. As if a piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball had melted there overnight
