A Tearing Life
and the Openings it Creates
A short story based on life’s living. On the layers of perception that shape who we think we are and who we may become. Written and narrated by Emma Yellowaga.
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They were on the train going to the city. That busy, bustling place built on the shore of a great lake. A lake with many names from many languages, telling a many storied history that they did not know enough of. It was land that had been shared before the self ordained rule makers came to steal it.
Those already living and relating there, had agreed to take only what was needed and care for all the rest. While the others, the ones they were descended from, had not. The still smoking remains of the broken treaties and their dirty, seeping lies hung low over the paved streets. The dish had been shattered. The spoon, discarded.
They saw the facade of it all crumbling. Felt the earth rumbling in its hunger for a quake. They knew that soon, it would be a time of reckoning. One that no one could escape from. They didn’t know exactly when or how. It was not their place to know. But they felt it.
They had their headphones on, listening to recordings of themself. Poems and musings that spewed from their insides. No other place for them to land but on the page. Their backpack was filled with water and snacks. With the sustenance they felt they could no longer find inside the city’s suffocating grip.
They did not have a home there anymore. They were now firmly in the after of its wake. 1 apartment, 2 houses, 3 jobs (same place), 1 childbirth, 1 marriage, 1 divorce, their father’s death and 1 stint in “communal” living. They went infrequently now, for work. Riding the tracks along the frayed shoreline. Forgetting the radiant sparkle of the water once they reached the blinding buildings of progress.
They sat with hundreds of others. Most with headphones on like theirs, looking at their screens or reading a book. No one talking, really. Doing their best to avoid touching the people squeezed in around them. Maybe the others were searching for their future in the stolen hopes of monied power and ivory towers. Or maybe running from their past in the hectic rush of overly scheduled life. They had been doing both. Until it broke them and they left.
They had not had time—in the 6 am wake of first light—for their newly found morning ritual. Each day, when they didn’t feel cinched by life, they moved their body when they woke. It brought them back to its feeling, beating pulse. Re-sensing its bulges and divots after decades of numbness.
A body that they had begun to connect with again, when that deathly, sickly thing spread over the haze of living. Slowing everything down. Shifting time and what could be done with it. So many left alone on the inside of it all to face themselves and those they thought they loved. While death peaked at them from just around the corner.
Now, outside of the city and its immediacy, they found themselves in a new home. Unsure as to how they ended up there. With the little one that had moved through them. This other person now shaping the contours of their days. Living together in a small town between lakes. Its main street settled on an island. Surrounded by water, shores and bridges.
It was the home of the first lock built in a 44-lock expanse. One engineered by those who stole it from the Michi Saagiig1. Trying to flood out their name, but failing. Turning rivers into lakes. Drowning the wetlands and the wild rice. Blocking the migratory routes of the salmon and the eels. Sending in the city cottagers to zoom around the water’s surface. Just another playscape built on thieving and the blood of those rooted in the land.
It was there that they now lived. Another one from the city pulled to its reaches. Bound by the shame of their bloodline. By those who called themselves saviors and saints but lived as predators and pawns. Leaving them in the mess of what comes next. Lost in the sickness of an unfulfilled living. Haunted by the ghosts created for its churning. They desperately wanted to be part of the unravelling they felt in their bones. Amidst the white slick guilt of inherited money and a gutless floundering of where to start.
For now, the starting began in their body. In the morning—after they moved enough to hear its buzzing, percolating delight—they laid down on the floor. The rocky earth over a metre away, under the floorboards and insulation. They closed their eyes, laying flat and calm, reaching for the deep below. Condensed into their physical form. Waiting for the ripples around them that would make another’s presence known.
Then they would begin to feel a tongue, licking the soles of their feet. Lapping up the blood left behind from the shards of life they’d walked through. It’s wet roughness sliding across the sticky layers of fear and regret. Helping them to loosen. It was soothing. They did not think. They did not know. They simply rested in the comfort of the tending.
It was like that for months. As time passed, they began to notice that the sole licking visits lessened their pain. They allowed them to practice walking as themself. Not in their people pleasing shoes. The ones that constantly searched for validation. Not in their socks that itched with their pretending, as they desperately tried to fit in.
They showed them how to walk barefoot. Hairy toes spreading, as they moved through the ruptures that had begun to appear in their life. Slowly caring less of what others thought of them. Focusing instead on how they felt. On what it could be like to experience the world through their own eyes and their own flesh. No cape or crown. No socks or shoes.
They began to make small decisions, slight allowances, for what felt true to them. Not what made sense. Not what was expected. But for what felt like an exhale in a lifetime of held breath. The licking seemed to have subdued their most tireless inner critics and pedantic selves. Showing them they no longer held all of the reins. Advising them to make room.
They lingered in the thought of what they had missed that morning, as they arrived at the main city station. Every day, over 300,000 passengers rushed through its many doorwayed bursting. As they walked the shopping malled halls, they held out their hands on either side of them. They imagined their claws unfurling, extending, sharp and long. They allowed them to glide across all they passed, firmly tearing through the illusions that were being sold. Piercing the film of separation between the worlds.
As the tear grew, they watched the marvel of the many creatures sliding through. Roaming the halls. Stalking their prey. Feet treading firmly. Wings flapping wildly. Bodies slithering silently. Their panting, hissing, cawing grew humid and heavy in the air. Tufts of fur, pieces of scaled skin, loosened feathers, all drifted to the tiled floor. They smiled to themself as they looked around at the fast moving humans, blinded to the raw delight of what was happening.
The tunnels began to expel their insides into the warm morning sun. The bunker of corporate commutes remained heavy at their back. They briefly closed their eyes to feel the wind caressing the delicate hairs on their body. They kept their headphones on and their own voice in their ears, as they slowly walked to the office building they had been coming to for 8 years.
Their arrival felt ceremonial as they passed through the revolving doors. They entered the elevator and pressed the button for the 11th floor. They revelled in the knowing that soon they would be free from its sanitized stench and litigious lighting. They knew that soon they would not come back. They heard a howl reach
for them as the elevator doors closed. Reminding them of the opening that had only just begun.
If you enjoyed this story. If something moved inside of you. Please leave a comment or send me a message by responding to the email in your inbox. My writings are meant to be relational. My hope is to connect.
Williams, Doug. Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg: This Is Our Territory. Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2018.
Love this Emma: "They allowed them to practice walking as themself. Not in their people pleasing shoes. The ones that constantly searched for validation. Not in their socks that itched with their pretending, as they desperately tried to fit in.
They showed them how to walk barefoot. Hairy toes spreading, as they moved through the ruptures that had begun to appear in their life. Slowly caring less of what others thought of them." Gorgeous writing!