onding on snaw

It's not the kind of thing you can see to explain. The refrigerator was open and snow fell outside. She had them in her hand. She said, These are blueberries. But they were not. She unpackaged them. See? she said. I didn't, and so thought maybe something was the matter. And if something was the matter, I wondered what it was. I made conditional statements. Statements that suppose or imagine. With conjunctions that join. To connect. Like transitions. Phrases like "for example" and "that is." Also images illustrate a point, or represent: The light inside the refrigerator flickered intermittently without seeming to signal. It was cold, not only outside, but also in the kitchen. Only these are words. Oh yes they are, she said. But no, they are only. Words, that is. For example, this is not a blueberry. She made a fist. The berries bled violet and red in veins down her forearms where maybe there were real ones underneath, beneath the skin. Where really there was blood. I saw no seeds. And yet, These are seeded, she said. She said, I know where you get your ideas. That's a technique I've seen: calling someone out for something they've done. She said, These are my conditions, or maybe, This is conditional, indicating "us" with her skin-stained hand. I'm forgetting something. For some reason there was snow in the kitchen, falling on the floor. I wish there was. I wish there were, she said. She said, unless it is the case, it's only hypothetical. In that case I wish there would have been, I said, more of it on the snow, all over, if that's what it would have taken. If these had taken the form of something more than statements, of anything like your seedless spheres there. There's red in it; what looks like red there inside the black then. It's not a metaphor for anything. Something inside the darkness presents itself as red. At least is how I see it. And yes, there is red in it.

Photo by Sadie Myers.  Words by Diego Báez.