The Matter by Helen Vitoria

I avoid everything. If it has potential to cut me in half, spread me thin or red, like a million wandering seeds of a pomegranate, I avoid it. I keep quiet. Hands in pockets, at all times. Not touching is the best way to avoid things. Do Not Touch. But, I do touch the things in my pockets. The halter top I wore when I went drinking with mad boys that I did not know well. The books I never read but should have. The promises I made and knew at that moment I would never keep. The knives that he used to sever the apples. All the sticks I used to kill yellow snakes. I avoid the myth itself. Never the desire.

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Reasons by Helen Vitoria

As if the universe was an assault. We end up at the same place, at the same time, in the same ghost town after four years. How fast those four years must have gone for you. You spend time laying out the odds, gambling on the interior of a cloud collapsing. I heard you became a magician. Your life must have been a hell of a tabletop trick. I heard you learned how to tuck people in the cuff of your sleeve, that your mouth became a bleeding martyrdom. My four years were different. I changed the seasons around, kept it winter year round. I would have sent you pictures, but I knew you could not bear it. I quit taking risks that did not involve lightening. I learned to study wings. There were feathery wings, translucent wings, wings in a graveyard, and iridescent wings that turned to dust in my hands. I later thought it was best to study magic tricks. You know, the inner workings of salvation. I learned how to wait.

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