PASSAGE Erini Katopodis
Concrete 2015
I was here, I was here: I am evidence of me, myself. I will not die—did you know that? They tell me that I will, but it isn’t true. I walk through any place and leave behind enough skin to sketch an outline of my dancing body, the shed cells lingering. When I leave, my ghost in dust re-walks my steps, repeats my motions; my ghost in dust echoes my words when they leave my mouth. I have a hundred copies of myself repeating, and so I do not ever leave. My other selves sweeten the air with my breath though I am not there to breathe it. I rub my hands on a wall until I feel skin sticking—I pluck a hair and hide it under a rock—I chew a toothpick and bury it. I need this semi-permanence. Markers as manifestations. A thousand years in the future, some race studying strange dead civilizations will pick up the pieces of me. Their scientists will analyze me back to life, take the toothprints and build up my jaw. Then cheeks, eyes and mouth, and they will find me this way. My face will stare out of their screens long after I’m dead. They will talk to me, and my eyes will hold no secrets. Here, in the dirt—there, in the sand. Every strand of me reappearing as if I never left. I am a thousand places, on every rock I have ever walked, and every cement block upon which I have spat. I am nowhere; I will not die; I am moving. Leaving pieces of myself, so many ghosts stretching my being wide. I am evidence of me, myself.
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