BY TALULAH BROWN
Flashes of pink and gold haunt me as moments in my life which appear unclear yet somehow the most beautiful. I remember the thin, flaxen hair of the life-size barbie doll which stood in the basement of my childhood home. The pond my father installed never tasted water, yet I see the phantom fish I coveted. It is my impression, that my tambourine still lies smashed on my mother’s bathroom floor. A foot shaped hole in place of the instrument’s rough head.
I do my best to envision the world as it was before me. As I clutch my father’s stolen journal, I find it may be easier to exist as a figment of someone’s imagination than a heartbeat that breathes. I picture myself in my mother’s stomach, drenched in the fluids that connect us. I feel the benevolence of her hands through the thick skin that divides us. When she sways to her best-loved music, I swim in unison to the muffled, ethereal noise. When she trembles, I emulate her movements and steadily practice each of her shivers. When she sleeps, I flounder and wiggle my toes and fingers, vigilant to any sign that she may be awake.
It is after I dream that I see the world clearly: When the sky is idle, not yet beguiled by blue. I long for the places I have not seen; for moments of freshly picked peaches, dogs with twisted chocolate hair, and sleeping babies in golden sarongs. A garden, where I could grow my own cabbage and carrots, for people who know the difference between science and pragmatic magic. I’d spend time inside a small house that sits in between a mountain and a gargantuan body of water. It is here that I will once again discover the music of my mother’s gut.
Talulah Brown graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a bachelor of arts in May 2018, and is from Los Angeles, California but currently lives in New York.