Salt and Cyclone

Some say the spiral is a trap. I say it is the only shape that knows how to return.

The body inventories its weather: hands open, throat closed, feet cold in the salt room, ribs holding a sound that hasn't decided if it is a cry or a song.

Mud. Salt. Crystals. Rock. Water. Each one equal. None of them the answer. The answer is the gap between them where the light gets in and doesn't explain itself.

My grandmother stood here once. She opened her palms toward the white wall and the wall opened back - not a door, not a miracle, just the faintest contrast: white showing where white had been disturbed.

The spiral tightens. The spiral loosens. The thing that wears away is the thing that stays.

Some say the walls are thinnest where they crack. I say the walls are thinnest where something beyond burns through - and the burning is not destruction, is not destruction, is the room becoming what it was always going to become.

I am not lost. I am the spiral. I am returning crusted in salt and barely visible and that is the brightest thing I have ever been.