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Don’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
She was born with a wine-colored birthmark: a river streaming down her chest, dividing around her left nipple, and cascading toward her navel. A thatched hut prickled into being underneath her first bra. It stayed two weeks, heart-side, tickling thatch replaced each dawn until it collapsed to dust in a day (or year).
The first six years (or two millennia) were similar: a handful of huts would sprout on her breast for a month (or generation). Even though the houses looked like ink, flat beneath her fingers, she reserved kissing for unsettled days. On prom night, sensation crawled across her areola while she danced slow, cheek to chest. Disappointed, she returned to her narrow bed alone.
In college, she worked at a lingerie store, collecting bras of varied opacity, while the city grew toward her heart: windowless houses, rooftop trapdoors, shared walls. Freshly plastered ochre at dawn, stained soot by evening, her breast a sun-clock.
After admiring her tattoo, one lover critiqued her practically numb, utterly unresponsive nipple. “Thank all the gods for that small miracle,” she said, carefully inclusive. If she was clever, with the right lighting and lingerie, she could keep a lover for weeks. She released that one the next day.
Eighteen years after the first hut appeared (or six millennia), she watched the city spread across the river along the outer curve of her breast. Unlike on heart-side, the arm-side homes varied: sometimes two-story, sometimes one-story, painted a rainbow of clay-based hues. A temple grew hidden in the downward curve. Outside its door sat a statue with sagging breasts and belly.
She examined the temple in the mirror, charmed by the naked old woman, an ordinary idol. She didn’t know the temple was an anachronism. It was a sign her city had already outlived destiny and was creating featherweight shifts in Neolithic history.
On the day she said yes, her breasts were well-shaped, surely too young to harbor microscopic renegade cells that grew faster even than her city. Her “brave and beautiful tattoo” was photographed. She noted the time and set her date with the knife for the same hour, one week (seven years) later, praying for a miracle. The next week, her surgeon noticed the tattoo’s growth, unaccompanied by redness or oozing. Doubting his memory, he said nothing.
She was still single when the sterile knife carved away nipple and areola, never trusting another’s eyes to watch the city grow. Pinching the circle closed, the surgeon sewed a line, rerouting waterways, and neighborhoods.
Later, she would wonder: Which killed my city? Floods? Droughts? New neighbors?
Heart-side fell quickly; abandoned houses became refuse dumps. Their eventual collapse stung like a swarm of fire ants. Blighted areas expanded in heart-side even as the renegade patches of cells inside her shrank.
For a time, homes sprouted on arm-side. The temple expanded. She dared hope her yes would not matter. Even when embarrassed, she loved her city. Even when she failed to understand it, which was always.
The past galloped toward the ponderous present. If she had said no, the past might have saved her present. That temple with its ordinary idol birthed a matrilineal culture. In a hundred days (or years) what might they have accomplished? Her city might have seeded others until the whole of the ancient world worshipped those rounded hips and sagging breasts. Imagine medicine beginning with such a people, ones who would surely center women’s health. In later years, when she was being especially hard on herself, she would wonder. If she had said no, if she had waited, would she live in a world where malignancies were discovered and cured with simple shots?
Or maybe time was a rubber band, deceptively elastic until it snaps back.
The city’s folk returned to villages and farms, letting their former homes slide beneath sand until all that was left were two mounds and her breast was unsettled again.
She married, had a daughter, grew old. Her spouse traced her birthmark, comparing it to a river. “You’re a poet,” she said. If only you knew, she thought. She didn’t tell the story of her city, not even to the one she most loved. Breaking the habit of silence took time.
After twenty-two years had passed (eight millennia) she felt a familiar prickling. Standing before the bathroom mirror, sagging like an idol, she watched her city re-form. Eventually, her spouse joined her, tracing the flat image that expanded beneath their fingers. They stood together in awe for almost a month of city time (two hours).
“An excavation,” she finally explained.
A graduate of USM's Stonecoast MFA program and the Clarion Workshop, Liz Levin lives in the Midwest. Recently, she trapped the Greek god Ares in a founding American document to disastrous effect. She is writing a fantasy novel chronicling those effects. Don't tell her it's a metaphor. When she is busy writing, she knows that magic is real. Someday, if she gets this writing thing right, she'll convince you.