This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar

I have been birds and branches. I have been bees and wolves. I have been ether flooding the void between stars, tangling their breath into networks of song. I have been fish and plankton and humus, and all these have been me.

The paper’s from Wuhan, Song dynasty, handmade: Leave it in a damp place and it will rot; mix it in water and you’ll have a pulp. Destroy it on your own, in your own way, if you want. I won’t mind. We all have our observers. And this letter is a knife at my neck, if cutting’s what you want.

I write to you in the dark before dawn, slowly, longhand, chalk on slate—later I will translate these words into feathers. There is a small hill from which I can watch the sun set over the Outaouais River; every evening I see a red sky bleed over blue water and think of us. Have you ever watched this kind of sunset? The colours don’t blend: the redder the sky the bluer the water, as we tilt away from the sun.

Words can wound—but they’re bridges, too. (Like the bridges that are all that Genghis left behind.) Though maybe a bridge can also be a wound? To paraphrase a prophet: Letters are structures, not events. Yours give me a place to live inside.