THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF WIND

by Jennifer Denrow

In the personal history of wind, there is this. Beyond this, there is all of the time. Even in winter, even in the reliable snow we watch the sky break. And then the helicopter. The aphrodisiacs and geese. I pick up what’s near us: three horses, stable between trees. I don’t memorize their manes.

The mascots in wind blow away. Our parliaments settle into our laps. In a long river, I row three people home. They shoot me with water guns and tell me to hurry. The animals are next to us with their incredible lives.

I don’t mind the way time is or the appearance of clouds. I put everything together and memorize it. When the world returns I swim out and back in a fit of loneliness. I go to the meadow where the wind has collapsed.

The day was filled with wind. The far manes were practicing their horses alone. We walked over to them, galloping our stables through the dirt. They thought it was fine.

The people come from themselves. They’re the operations they couldn’t afford. On the other side of the room, they are dressed like clouds. We give them the personal history of wind. When it gets too loud, we shut the door and never go back. The room sits empty for months, filling up with the sound of each drama. We stop imagining what’s happening in the room, and later forget there was ever a room to begin with. Our participation in each other still occurs, but slowly, forgetfully.

I replace us with everything we see. It’s easy to do. I keep the winter in the winter. Outside, the snow. We are arranged now before it. In the snow, a crop of geese break up. I follow them until I can’t find them anymore. The street fills up with many collapsed animals. It’s a mess. I take them home and make animal sounds to them. My home is in the valley. No one comes to visit except for a woman who is sad. She fills the animals with elegies. For many days we weep together in daylight above them. At night she walks home in wind. The animals wail. Nothing is alike.

After the personal history of wind, I slide a packet of sugar under my leg and keep it there. No one asks about it. When I leave, I leave the sugar. It’s without me for the first time all day. I don’t think about it again. I swim. I put the water in my hair. Someone comes in the water and kisses me. I don’t do anything about it. Everything with us is getting wet. We say to each other, See, See and we hold our eyes open with our thumbs. The possibility hurts us to consider.

All day I wait on wind that doesn’t come. I don’t mention what I’m waiting for when someone asks. I keep waiting in the dark, waiting now for anything to show up in the glass. Nothing would surprise me, not even one hundred naked people with rocket ships. I lie back against the wall and breathe in everything that can fill up a human body. I exhale slowly with my mouth open and my breath keeps coming out so I make a sound to match it. I can feel years coming out of me and oceans and falcons. I breathe out everything. From where I’m sitting, there isn’t a moon or light or even the possibility that there could be. I take in some water.

The universe is made of wind.

Breaking open, the tree inside the person with the tree inside her breaks in half, opens and the guts come out as real guts. It is winter. Two mallards make love in snow without effort. Nothing can be determined from here.

What alarms us is wind. No one covers us in wings but we look like they do. Our stomachs fill with leaves.

Look at this.

Look at it longer. Make a sound

in the air to yourself

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