Between the Bones: Fragments of language and story extracted from the body. A physical reckoning in pieces. Expressions of aliveness quilted imprecisely along the seam where skin contacts air. An effort to make a story from all these breaths.

A new monthly column, by Temim Fruchter

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On The Bottom

“Feet are alien, like a hoof or a wing. They are more like tools or furniture than like flesh, they are so sturdy and well-crafted and so serviceable. Maybe they are a little too far away from the heart to befriend though at one time I could put my big toe in my mouth, and I aspire to do it again, though without much hope.” – Shelley Jackson, My Body: A Wunderkammer

Before we met, I was afraid of my own feet. So afraid I sometimes couldn’t look. I admit that I even tried to forget them sometimes. To forget the very things that held me up.

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When I was eight, I had pink plastic slip-on shoes that I loved because they shimmered and they were all I could see when I looked down, which made it seem like I just tapered there, pointed and glittered, like I could make up a new name starting from the bottom. The shoes did not grow alongside me, though my feet did, as did a low-hanging shame that waxed with each fattening moon. My blunt grown-up pancake feet, with their no arches, my feet with their chipped red polish, my feet like a golem’s – ungraceful stones, impostors in shoes. Continue reading →