witness

No one pays attention to Lark Holly and Lark Holly pays attention to no one. It’s easy to forget about her and her slight stature, greying hair, the teeth that put kindergarteners into furious paths of brushing, lest they become her mirror. When she rumble-rolls down Opelika Road dragging the grocery bubbie full of her stuff behind her, no one slows down to a gentle roll to press their window down and ask her if she needs a hot meal or a place to crash or twenty dollars.

Lark Holly likes it that way.

A couple of cars swerve around her two-bodied caravan, nearly tipping the cart over. She’s grown into Auburn’s scenery, like the fast paced drivers on the road just expect her to not have corporeal form. She’s like a speed limit sign or a light post just clicking on when the sun goes down, shimmering, lax. It doesn’t bother her. They could only hit her if they tried, and they never do.

But on that day, with the heat still on in your girlfriend’s car even though it’s April and the humidity is sneaking up on you, you see Lark. It’s a stoplight miracle, in between the McDonald’s and the Waffle House, catching air and sunset in the palm of your hands with the window rolled all the way down. Gym boys are crawling from the Planet Fitness and you’re there. And Lark’s there.

Before you can catch her out of the corner of your eye, you imagine yourself with webbed fingers. There’s no reason why, really, just the thought experiment. Some beast or freak of nature human. How would things go if you were incredibly different from the way you were now? How would it feel to be set down on a different path after your birth?

And then, you reach out to her and the moments slow down when Lark’s green irises roll behind her lashes. Everything around you—your girlfriend’s, the car, the Starbucks frappuccino melting between your pinched thighs—ceases to exist along that roadway. Now, you’re suspended in the air a couple feet above the white dashed lines.

Lark knows you. She’s been knowing every person in this asshole town, but in that moment she really knows you best. Seconds spread out and you count the tattered Walmart bags lining her buggy. No one’s ever seen her without the thing. The cart is a person, existing alongside her, rippling.

You see yourself from a bird’s eye, stepping from the suspended motion to crawl on your hands and knees, the asphalt like a nonstick pan on your Granny’s stove. And you go towards her. Your mouth opens and closes, as if craving, as if knowing. And then she undoes all the mess inside that buggy and lifts you up in her arms, curling you inside of it all fetal, hair undone, spread out, flat wires.

And then your girlfriend flicks the A/C on and hits the gas and Bon Jovi is back in your ears and Lark is behind you. You were just a witness.