I walked up and down the grid. Up and down. I watched units pass by, one, tick, two, tick, three, tick. Zero, tick, minus one, tick, minus two, tick. If I could just veer to the left, somewhere that had an x, but I moved only y, y y.

The funny thing is, for a flatland, a lineland, this one was bristling with painful thorns, thistles and nettles that grew into the x, while I walked the y line and cut my feet. I leaned over now and again to touch that blood, dripping off, down, into the white of the paper. I can only guess that that red soaked into the world around me, stained x, maybe z. But here on y I staunched it as best I could, I kept ticking off the forward and back, ah the forward and back. It's all we've got, is that not right?

That y was straight for me, doesn't mean that I ran through the world in one straight line. No, no. I wandered in a path that bent back on itself, so that I glimpsed myself, sitting there, licking blood off my fingers, walking, walking, walking.

Then, yes, I saw the x. How, how did that mean something? Suddenly I was no longer sleeping, because now I could move in two directions. I might escape myself, my bloody lips.

But there, there in x was a thousand ys, a thousand mes, and they were all licking blood off their hands. This one was sucking his thumb from a bee sting, and this a scabbed knee from climbing on rocks; this one cut his flailing thighs on deep ocean shells. Thistles and nettles be damned! But again I bled, and I wondered if this grid were everywhere. Yes, of course I then found z, and we all know that story. So many bees, so many wasps, and blood from cuttle fish and blood from coral.

And so I drew my own grid, my crazy grid. The nettles felt good, I didn't bleed when I touched them. Those nettles welcomed me, they embraced my poor, tired legs, wherever I wandered. But I didn't wander long, and I slept with the nettles wreathed around my legs, my thighs, my torso, my neck. They grew slowly, touching me with their suddenly subtle tendrils, happy to share their joy with the things they touched. They embraced the bees, and they embraced the wasps, and the spiders. I forgot a z and there was no x, and no y.

I 've found a way up.

I remember, so very long ago, when you and I looked up to the heavens, and we saw the stars, floating, moving, and we thought it might be possible to get there, and it might be fun to try to get there, where there is light.

I've found a way up.

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A new letter.


I 'm enjoying my little plot of land. There's a nice circle here, a walk I can make in a few minutes, centered around a tree. I've found it soothing.

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I've just opened another letter and I find there is more!


Mom,

I know you and Father did not want me to be wood. Maybe that is why you forced men of metal on me later, because if I wasn't metal, maybe our babies would be. You are crystal, but metal grinds and scratches crystal; you must have known how many times I was scratched and scarred. How many times has he hurt you, mother, willing or not? With the first metal boy, I told myself it wasn't him, I didn't put together the scratches and his hard edges. But his sharp bones tore the skin off my breast, and soon I could see notches and scoring in the wood underneath. I was young and I was in love and so I bore the pain, until a large mass had grown there and every caress was agony; you know I left him then. I would not let the other men of metal so close to me, but they, too, cut at my skin and always left me bleeding; the scar in my chest did not heal.

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It's been some time since I've received a letter to pass on. This one's been percolating for a while, so there may be more, but I wanted to pass this one on, it's been sitting on my desk for some time.


Mom,

Before I was born, I fell. Through the bright, self-lit limbs of monstrous tall trees, I fell with the sound of the wind in my ears: WHOOSH. That sound and the exquisite, luminous white of leafless trees, and only darkness and silence otherwise. I stared straight down, because I couldn't focus on any single branch, instead they tore my view with jagged white like lightning, one after one, whoosh whoosh whoosh. They were all molten platinum veins glowing in the darkness, the limbs, and they were many and the same.

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