blazed
The Fossil
Once, A had sent a message to M that read, “I want to slip my fingers into the grooves of your fingers. I want to make a plaster cast of the hollow between our palms and carry it with me everywhere.”
A had sent that message on a train, on the way to school. He had not considered the actual mechanics of this act. First he would have to get some plaster-of-Paris. He would have to mix it in a bowl, preferably with cold water. And then he would have to scoop up a wet, starchy lump, rolling it in his palm first, before clasping M’s hand, the other half of the mould.
How long would their little experiment take to dry? And with such pliable moulds, what kind of shape would they form? Perhaps a chalky disc, convex on both sides, or something even smaller—an alabaster cookie, a snow lentil, a lens clouded completely by cataract. And on its surface, would they also see the imprints of their palm creases too, faint rivulets, eroded runes on both sides of an amulet?
A looked it up: ten to fifteen minutes, on average. First the lump would feel cold in their hands, and then as molecules of calcium sulphate and water combined, it would become hot. An exothermic reaction, a system releasing heat to the surroundings. A would have asked M, what kind of system were we? Exothermic, endothermic? A trick question. We released heat, and in the process, grew colder inside. Or, we absorbed heat, in order to break the tiny bonds that held us together. One couldn’t win either way.
A sometimes visits the places that he and M had been. A thinks of time as wet cement. M had pressed his body here: on a bus stop seat, a void deck bench, sitting on the floor of a lift lobby, lying and pretending to be asleep on a parapet in front of a shuttered clinic, reclining with perfect feline balance in a circle hewn into a void deck pillar. Time is wet cement that dries after the person has gone. A sees M’s reverse relief everywhere: hollows and cavities, indentations and wrinkles, their surfaces unyielding as stone. Where once there were elbows, anklebones, earlobes, hair, motion, grace. Time hardens to clarify the space of M’s absence.
A looks at his palm and imagines: a handful of white dust. The experiment has dried.
