s k i n & & s k i n
this zine is dedicated to us,
“For if the skin is a border, then it is a border that feels.”
— Sara Ahmed Strange Encounters p. 45
thinking of the vulnerability that makes this all worth it. the vulnerability that makes it all painful to begin with. how being valued for speaking with ghosts makes you feel grateful to be alive. how sometimes even when we speak with ghosts i defend myself against myself, by intellectualizing until the heart that fears losing that vulnerability folds itself over and over, neatly, clinically, and the ghost finally collapses into an acute chest pain, an invisible hand that blood tests do not have the imagination to find. yet the love from those around you is invisible too. questions, more than answers, become a reason for living.
as you find me after Jane Shi’s “ You Have Given Me” walking in circles we skim new life at each turn each turn a wind towards our breath, skim new breath for each circle we walk. where skin runs deep i know to hide from storms, and passing hopes will remember sleep where we leave our step. turning ropes against the grain of mirrors and losing all the salt that moves, each life is turned but breath is weight and shadows heavy and to carry each we need new skin for every circle we walk in.
here hoping now feasting, a cup and coil under cloaks ablaze, mirrors for your hand that feed every colour until barely hidden, the storms emerge and skate again across piles left till ripeness pleases, and what is waking ash flung close to here, but a storm against a passing grain a circle found and skin anew a wind-turn for our kin.
so we inherit pain / so we inherit possibility
to remember we are beaut iful in rest as in movement / that rest too is a beautiful movement
interlude
dear a. // haven’t been sleeping well this month and it makes me reflect on how i’ve been feeling like i’m spilling everywhere, and how even reading the word “grief ” is enough to wrench me open right now. how exhaustion feels like betrayal, how we call the sea treacherous as we project our betrayal upon it. how small and large holding hands makes me feel. how this “i” has been violently made possible in reading the face-to-face, the skin-to-skin, as places where we have yet to meet. who, and how, is the “we”...?
may we feel beloved we hold generosity close secrets protect us the better worlds we build exceed our wildest dreams
these things take time
(please read panels right to left)
(c) amanda w. 2019 instagram: @woodandwater_art #: _____ made of wood & water created on the unceded, ancestral, occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Stรณ:lล , and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
acknowledgements amd as js my ss bx tm rl ll know you are beloved.
n i k s & & n i k s