Rat observes a Monet

as i sit at my desk towering over the skycrapers of san francisco, i am brought to wonder how body morphs into a miniature metaphor of the environment it embodies.

as i gaze up into the blue skyscrapers moving against the gray, foggy sky, i feel the sky is the furthest it has ever been from me. steel and glass frame the sky to me as frames in a museum showcasing a fantasy unattainable to me, a rat under artificial lights shown a monet painting, eyes wide with admiration and brain empty of comprehension.

as my neck stretches and my eyes brush over the tall, slender buildings, inspecting their vertical lines, i suddenly breathe in the dusty air of ethiopia. the hues around me turn dark orange, the roads feel earthy and mellow on my feet, the mountains of tigray stretch my neck with their humiliating altitude.

the grounds of san francisco were asphaltic and linear. they forced my body to become a formation of perpendicular lines adapting to the grids of cement. the curvy soles of my feet ached, the lordoses of my spine tempted themselves into dysfunctional parallels, the curves of my hips ashamedly hid their swings into the masculine walk of perpendicularity. the spherical nature my biology consistently attempted to betray its essence to morph into san francisco.

as my neck stretches further, and the wild warmth, thin alpine quality of the ethiopian air enters my cold chest and twists into my blood, the viscous brown of it turns into hot, bright red, pulsatile blood. if i were stabbed right this moment, the liveliness of my deliciously hot arteries would turn the orange earth of ethiopia’s ground into a work of bright red art.

the grounds of ethiopia are earthy and soft. my soles melt into the earth, the dirt engulfs the curves of my aching feet, embracing my heels and toes, and climbs up my ankles and legs as ivy does, anchoring me further into the heavy grounds. the kyphoses of my spine relax and stretch, settling comfortably into the curves of their biology. my hips are released and expand into the width of womanhood as the hot blood travels to nourish them, rain after drought. i morph back into ethiopia and it embraces me in its grandeur, an organ returning to its host.

and so i stand in an empty street of san francisco’s financial district, a ray of sunlight hitting my face in warmth, a lonely woman trembling in the asphalt, a sigh of pure relief reshaping her body as she breathes in and out. two homeless men lie on the pavement next to me. one has an amputated foot. the other is shaking like me. he seems out of san francisco too. is he also in ethiopia’s warm sun, under the mountains of tigray, with me?