Atlas and Alice, Issue 20
Jana Miller
Folds Within Folds Under Edy’s hands, five seconds of life play out in folded paper. A moving menagerie of starts and sudden stops between origami creases. A kiss of birth. A gift. Five seconds is enough for: • • •
A butterfly’s wing to open and close once Five steps of a quick fox, pointed paper footpads skidding to a halt A layered rosebud to loosen and stretch its outer petals, opened forever to the sun
Edy tries to refold the lines, rebuild, but the gift is gone in restart. Her creations live only long enough to stumble, to bloom, to begin in the same space it takes for atoms to slough off a lazy pinwheel. A motor of moments. In potential she can predict an object’s start, its fall, the pattern of its undoing. She can fold paper into anything. In five seconds she can determine: • • •
If a train will stop If the boy will reach out, just slightly, towards her If she will fall
Edy builds and folds, a future in mind, a start as close as a blush.
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