Mineral Sweat
Anjali Gauld
→BFA GL 2026
I saw a fisher who was supposed to be a postman and was intensely moved.
My friend and I have matching hands, by accident and by love.
I’m convinced that everything I hear stays inside me—it’ll never leave, and I’ll keep growing, getting taller and bigger until all space is mine, until I can reach each finger around my own wrist twice.
I saw a small violin and a curious field—I know better and know always, windswept woman on the wall, pulling the gooseneck.
Sometimes I feel fear so strange I freeze in place—then throw my ear to the ground—try to listen to the fish below.
She mistakes mustelid for feline, and I look at ermines every morning, leaping and curling and jumping in ways I never will—stiff hips and long arms—I can’t move like they do.
—
New eyes birth me.
Foam floats up, fights gravity without telling her; they work together and link fingers, waiting to feel something sweet and harsh on the wind.
Water is solid to my eyes; my new eyes see stone where it’s needed.
An ache meets something cold and they marry quickly, a love like no other.
My body has been spun on its axis, and I’ve stopped a few degrees short of the whole.
I’m leaning on my left leg because my right hip aches when I sleep; my left foot will lift broken ice and reveal leaves still trapped in their autumn stasis.
I see new memory, raw pink hills to replace a thoughtless line.
As my left lower eyelid continues to twitch, my left pinky moves, constantly, strays from the others; seeks to match, then compare, then fail to feel the past.
I might hate to hear a voice when my throat hurts so acutely;
I might laugh and lose my breath when I finally look up.
Anjali Gauld sees sixty-seven lights, times twenty-two, and comes to a rough estimate in the thousands.