The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

After all, for you, there was no predicting where you are now, sitting in this Inverted Theater. The family spear you had given away now less a spear than a sewing needle, stitching two distant points of time together in one unending embrace. You wondered, as you gave the spear to Keema, why it was you who was chosen to be representative of all the descendants; why you, whose connection to the Old Country was tenuous and variable at best—and, in some essential way, poisoned, considering your heritage. But perhaps now you understand that you are not a representative. That like the spear’s journey through time, much of this dance is dictated by chance. You are merely, crucially, no one but yourself, as anyone else is themselves—mere stewards, gifting recursively over the divide of time this spear, that memory, to the people and the place from which they had come—and who, in turn, gift back to you your strange, and sad, and wide-eyed futures.