Fragments of language and story extracted from the body

–by Temim Fruchter

What Weighs

“Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. “ – Anais Nin

*

We were not counting on the weight of the chicken.

It was heavier than a chicken should be, everyone agreed – even for a large chicken, the kind you would be proud to find toward the back of the freezer, behind the smaller, rounder chickens, a muscly misfit back there, too bulky to be on display but perfect to feed the lot of us.

Because we would be eating in a different city, we put the chicken between the clothes in my cloth suitcase, frozen solid, and zipped it up so it bulged around the midriff, heaving it upright and pulling out the handle for easier carriage. It was when I tried to walk that I realized that the suitcase wouldn’t move. When I moved the suitcase anyway, it protested stiff and the handle snapped off, and then there was nothing to do but push the suitcase to where I was going with everything I had from my pelvis up to my chest. Continue reading →