Xibalbá :: Rebirth

Two months after your last radiation session, ocean water fills your ears. Muffle of seagull chatter. Muffle of ship horns in the distance. Muffle of the man singing to his lover in Spanish as they spoon chest-deep in waves—the very ocean gathers close to your eardrums, whispering to you in swells, beats & illegible echoes. Your body held as tender bloat, into tide. 

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You, an illegible echo pounding into nothingness. You with belief someone, something, someplace not only hears your pulses but utters back, Hey hey, I get you. 

The whole damn world quieted.

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The unknown quivers around you, in you—your face above the lapping into sun. Sun, harsh lover, turns the inside of your eyelids red. In suspension, the Popol Vuh, Hunahpú & Xbalanqué creep in. After they jumped into flames, the soothsayers spread their ashes in the Xibalbán river. They transformed to fishmen. Later gods, again. Dressed as peddling performers, they returned to One Death & Seven Death trickier. You think of tricks. The flight attendant en route to the ocean stating, We need twenty people from the front to move to the back—only seventy people on a 175-seat 737. You think about ratios & weight & how comfort arrives disguised as unbalance. Did Hunahpú & Xbalanqué feel askew in their new forms—now being brothers reborn in the waters of Xibalbá?

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You read the news about dangerous riptides. A new hurricane forming in the Pacific. Illegibility a type of riptide promising then withholding. You always wonder: Illegible to whom?

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Cells inside you wonder why you wonder so much. 

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You think about coastlines, where any body meets another body. All crash crash crash. All anticipation. All flooding forward. All tearing back. Desire in the repeat. Desire in the repeat.

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You flip your body from float to stand. To your left, a moon jellyfish—clear & mushroom-headed with red gonads visible announces to you, Hey, hey, I am here too. Aloneness, nah. Just float. You think of Xbalanqué cutting off Hunahpú’s head. Growing it back. You think of One Death & Seven Death screeching, Now me! My turn!

How many tricks does it take? 

The inevitability of the Lords of Xibalbá losing heads. Inevitability of the Hero Twins winning. Inevitability of any story ending in clap clap. In any story ending: ends string from. A story. A moral. A story. A mortal. Did Xbalanqué & Hunahpú’s risk as gods tricking? 

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Remember Y’s words, Mortality makes people squirmy. Your own trickiness. You & moon jellyfish, side-by-side. Briefly squirmless. Briefly aware. Before the tide moves you both, into a wayward muffle.