I Can Feel My Heart in My Left Hip / Natural Witness

a nonlinear stream of awareness during a trip to norway

The cold breeze ripples through my sundress as I traverse through the brick streets. It’s something that is supposed to be familiar, a scene meant to be remembered. That’s why living through it is foreign. 

Everyone here is tall and white-blond. 

The weather back home was making me want to commit public indecency, but now I am alright. For the most part. I still have no tolerance for the heat of the sun which peeks through the tree branches from time to time. I watch my skin caramelize.  

In the heart of Oslo, I wander through a park lined with cobblestone paths and verdant patches of grass. The afternoon isn’t very remarkable. It bleeds right into the day before.

My eye spots a plastic pebble, almost hidden from view, nestled between the stones. I don’t know how I notice it. It is a deep blue color, glinting dully in the soft southeastern sunlight. 

I bend down to pick it up, feeling an inexplicable twinge of guilt as I do so. Taking something that isn’t mine — even if it is as insignificant as a plastic pebble amidst real, solid stones — felt like theft. 

I turn the pebble over in my hand, its smooth surface catching the light, I thought about the absurdity of its existence. Not to be a nihilist, but plastic pebbles serve almost no purpose, except those related to appearances and decoration— and even then, there is an abundance of real stones in the land. Plastic stones cannot help garden drainage or form sturdy paths. They’re just there, as useless and as out of place as chewy candy in a gum wrapper — almost there, but not quite — a byproduct of a world overwhelmed by synthetic materials. They say imitation is flattery but this fake pebble has failed at imitation and it is not flattering the real stones. I can tell that they do not accept it. 

But there is something oddly endearing about this particular deep blue imitation stone. Maybe it is the way it contrasts the rough, natural stones around it, or the fact that it has managed to find its way into such an incongruous setting. I think about the omnipresence of human interference in the natural world. We created something so artificial and it somehow infiltrated this serene, carefully curated environment. And, honestly, the world is full of all these tiny intrusions: these synthetic artefacts that speak to the relentless production and consumption we are eternally bound to.

I slip the pebble into my pocket, its smooth weight comforting against my palm. A keepsake, my little blue one. I will keep you right under my pillow. You are synthetic, but I love you all the same. 

I think about how periods and commas are like chocolate sprinkles. I take a selfie beside a coffee machine and put a silly filter on, then delete it. The man at the ice cream shop compliments my pronunciation, even though the only Norwegian I know is the three words I learned on my phone while waiting for boarding at the airport. It’s unusual that he's even speaking to me normally. Everyone here is frozen stiff. And tall. And white-blond.

My mother will never take a sip of egg coffee. The women in my family are obsessed with coffee, and they despise eggs unless they are served at breakfast (either scrambled, omelet, or shakshouka). She tells me she would throw up if she tasted the egg. She also says I should marry a Norwegian man, so that she can visit me here every year. I tell her I’m alright. 

When I get home I will undress apples for my pie and soak them in cinnamon sugar water and tears. They will be bittersweet and warm. Vanilla ice cream oozing on a fresh hot slice, resembling seafoam as it trickles down. All I’m missing is a babe on one hip and a laundry basket on the other, and a man who loves me as much as I love him so I have someone to lay all my adoration on. 

I hope every apple seed goes to heaven. 

I walk through the forest for the first time in about six years, and for a moment, the dense canopy above feels like a cocoon shielding me from the world's glaring demands. Everyday it seems more and more difficult to find a refuge from the relentless human impulse to conquer and illuminate every corner of existence. How foolish we are, always reaching to tame the wild, to overlay it with our artificial brightness

Of course these lights serve a purpose. They guide our paths. Everybody loves a good light on a good highway. But what happens when we've illuminated every street until our eyes ache from the constant glare? What remains once we've stripped away the mystery, when there's nothing left to discover but the predictable contours of our own designs?

Our kind sprung from arrogant soil. We are always cutting away from the world so that it may fit our limited vision. We think we are everything and forget the frogs and the cats and the anthills and the hibiscus flowers. We anthropomorphize the ground we walk on (I am doing it right now, too, by assuming it minds what we do to it. I guess we’re doomed forever, no matter how aware we are of our faults)

I scratch the palm of my hand on a giant tree and I bleed,  but at least I got to touch it. Sometimes the revelations lie in the murkiness. Clarity is not always the only way to get clear. You will find the answers untamed and buried, nowhere near the glaring certainty of your fluorescent warehouse lights. I understand those who had to kill to warn us about our own arrogance. We’ve progressed so much that we’re regressing. It’s whatever. I’m only sixteen. I’m typing this on my phone, too. How funny. 

If I were really a whore, I’d be the pretentious type of whore, the self-proclaimed hedonist. One that’s always blabbering on about love-making and art and bodies and the art of love-making and the love-making of bodies. If I were a bot, I think I would be mildly charming but everyone would get annoyed by me fast. They would program me to have limited dialogue and I would repeat the same eight sentences then get uninstalled for a newer, more quick-witted advanced bot. At least I wouldn’t have emotions, otherwise I would envy the new one. I don’t know if I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m more like a sheep in really poorly sewn wolf’s clothing. But underneath the guise of the sheep I am just an overripe cherry.

I don’t know how to make my eyes look like they aren’t sinking into my skull. 

Sometimes I want to let all the mosquitoes and the bugs in the whole world bite me. I have a lot of blood and I want them to be happy. I’m sure I’ll live. 

I saw a beautiful flower and I was shocked. Can’t believe I live on the same planet as such beauty. I feed off of the same sunlight.

We ride a horse carriage for twenty minutes. The old man driving it hums traditional songs to the rhythm of the horses hooves click-clacking. I don’t understand a word of what he’s singing. I unconsciously tap my fingers to the makeshift beat. 

I trail through the wooden grounds. It rains gently. My cotton dress is dotted with water. But the more I walk, the further I follow the stream, the harder the rain falls. Soon I am soaked, my dress enveloping me like milky blue film as if I were dressed by the foggy waters and the soothing winds. I am their fairy princess daughter. Mist is melting over the contours of my body. Hair wet, skin dewy. I stop by a little cabin and drink hot tea in a green paper cup. It’s sweeter than I usually prefer my tea, but that’s fine with me. I am warmed up and happy. Someone brings me a coat. I forget who. Everything is okay.

On the carriage ride home, my little sister pokes her sharp elbows into me. I braid her hair. The bushes rustle. She waves at people and ducks. It’s nice to be a little girl.

If I open my bedroom window — my temporary bedroom in the little cottage we rented — I can pinch the fuchsia wildflower petals. Our neighbor is an old wrinkly woman who is very sweet. She gave me a pat on the back when we greeted her, and invited us over for breakfast. She was speaking to her granddaughter about something. I don’t speak the language but I am sure it was something about the Arabs next door (who we are), or chickens, or tea, or the chance of rain that day. You can usually tell. 

Physically I pass through the unknown grounds hastily and with the grace and poise of an opera singer's ghost, but my mind clings to all the beauty I capture with my retina. I imagine the life we could’ve had here or someplace a bit similar and still close— some place where you have stepped foot. I will write books and kiss your work-worn body until it surrenders into silk. 

What is it like to fall in love far away from a metropolis? I think of warm skin on warm skin on warm mud. I think of cold harsh winds and hot loving breath blowing into my mouth. A cold hand that will warm itself up using yours. Racing to pick the berries from the bushes, squishing them unknowingly beneath your rubber boots. Tasting the remnants of the sweet flavor inside your lover's soft mouth, which has always been sweet to you. 

When we are in said metropolis, we book a hotel. Hotels are the closest thing to heaven on earth. Magic. This one has a pool.

I slip on my bathing suit in the public bathroom and lather myself in oils and creams and when I am tired of sitting out in the sun, I lower myself into the water. It is nearly empty, save for little kids with their styrofoam pool noodles and a group of teenagers chatting idly and munching on honey-roasted nuts.

I swim laps in the chlorinated pool, alarmingly close to the floor with my stomach nearly grazing the tiles. It makes me feel like some delicate sea creature made of salt and seaweed and water poppies braided into kelp. I like holding my breath for as long as possible and trying to take it in slowly when I do go up to the surface for air. It gets me dizzy in an exciting way. It's great fun, like a sort of roulette. 

Sometimes when I am down near the floor fluttering my legs and combing through the water with my arms I hope, in my head, that I don't make it to the surface fast enough and that I choke and lose my breath for a second. Not that I want to die, I just want to feel fear. I want to get close to it a little, to tame death and seduce life so as to make her my mistress. There is no greater ecstasy than danger, especially the kind you can control.

I bought a teeny tiny pink dress from the shops here. I tried it on and felt like one of those plush dolls you can hang from the rear view mirror in your car. I bought crochet shorts, too, and a flower bracelet that a little girl was selling. When I go through my closet I imagine how badly I want you to see me in everything I own and think I am beautiful all the same. You would love the little pink dress. You’d love the lace and the shade of pink it is and the string bow. 

When it’s dark I stare at myself with wide eyes in the mirror and I get scared. I scare myself. I like feeling like I have something physical to run from. 

It's too hot for any clothes tonight. Maybe this is indecent, but at least I am not in public. I leave my window open a crack in case you want to visit. You’re always welcome. 

(It would be funny if the correct form was not “always” but instead “alway”. Like its half-sister “anyway”, commonly replaced by the colloquial “anyways”. One of the many things you taught me. But anyway—)

In the morning, I fill my glass tea cup. I know it is just the right amount of tea for me when the color begins to resemble your eyes bathed in golden light.

I throw away citrus peel after I crack open an orange before bed, and remember how citrus peel burns your delicate palms. I look out the window as I chew, staring right at the crescent slither in the sky. I am reminded of the time my nails carved rouge half-moons into the skin of your back. 

It’s funny how this was about Norway but now it’s just about you. You really are my everything. I miss the feeling of your hand in my back pocket, and the pulse at the base of your throat. Wrap a towel around my waist after beach day. It’s already over, already time for goodbye. 

After diving into deep waters, you need to eat some pineapples and lay by the sun before you can dive in again. But this time let’s not dive. This time we can float. 

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