Amy Woodside of Flint’s Fire for Dossier Journal. xx Jane is sucking on her bottom lip. She does this when she is concentrating or afraid. When Jane was 8 her father fell off a cliff when he was hiking with her mother. He reached down for his water canister, slipped under the stiff afternoon sun. […]
Amy Woodside The Ferris Wheel
Amy Woodside of Flint’s Fire for Dossier Journal. xx
Jane is sucking on her bottom lip. She does this when she is concentrating or afraid. When Jane was 8 her father fell off a cliff when he was hiking with her mother. He reached down for his water canister, slipped under the stiff afternoon sun. Jane has been scared of heights and the dry stare of scarecrows ever since. The ferris wheel was my idea.
Sitting in the lap of a fresh cut moon, our knees graze and my bones firework. Jane of the lemonade sweat, the bicycle eyes, the pear shampoo that turns me harlequin skinned. Our mothers say we are too young for bras. I see Jane’s nipples through her shirt and feel a fuse flicker in the deep sea of my stomach. A small fish swimming fast. A warm, wet fish breathing blood through the gills, growing a hot flood in my gut.
Our chair sways, rocking us to and fro. The tiny feet of Jane’s breath skip over me like a stone on water. I want to make a scarf out of her sighs, wear it like a noose. Jane’s knuckles whiten over the metal bar. I place my hand over hers. Her wrists are so small, they are smaller than the stars spilling silver on our faces and I am a full cup of truth, trembling.
*
Heights make me thirsty. I think of the stilted man in the giraffe mask, if he is ever scared of falling. The sound of stilts in soil much like the thud of wet firewood, the spit of splinters and tear of grass a lot louder underground. If he were to fall I would not hear it, trapped in the microwave music of the ferris wheel, spinning slowly.
The chair in front of us holds two lovers. She wraps herself around him like a glossy snake. She has been found by something that has not yet found me. He can smell it in her, it lives in the crease of her neck, that secret cave where he goes. I imagine I am an island, waiting to be discovered. He will be the one to explore me, sinking his fingers into my sand, turning my rocks over gently, claiming I am his.
We are at the highest point now, in line with the spine of the sky, dangling like a bright gem from night’s black neck. My ankles hang over a mess of rainbow machinery, of sticky fists and electric laughter. I am too close to the edge. There is a desert in my throat, a cactus crying. Violet puts her hand on mine and I watch the couple in front. One day soon, I will drop from these metal branches and burst.
