lifeguard

CW: death, grief, dysphoria

(live) Created and Performed by MK Ford
(media) Collaborative Performance with Christina Collins, Brit Falcon, and Ryan Smith

Special Thanks to Bree Breeden

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She'​s Dying.

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Take pause, breathe, slow down. Get me to the sea. I know destabilization - let the rhythm of turbulence be a tidal embracing belly.

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Adapt. Feel.

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I'm not sure what part of me lives and dies with you. I am of her body; not doubled - proxied. I feel like some of my cells should be dying, too - no? She's still in my bones, my blood, my skin - so how come I don't feel a gash to the chest, a clamp to my lungs, or a break in my bones when you are dying? Shouldn't this hurt? Instead, I'm suspended, lurched, severed in the glitch - fractals in a black hole magnetized between a utopian mirage and watching each. passing. breath.

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Adapt. Trans-form.

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I thought she needed her body, but no - now, I'm her body. She died at sea - she always knew how to float. To lift her toes off the seafloor, lie back, tack a deep breath, and billow across the water. "just like this" - she would say. I would always sink. I can't swim like she. I'm proxy. I'm she, me, and he - I am them, approximately.

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Adapt. On (the) line.

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I'm watching the breath and waiting for the next; which, it won't. The rhythm breaks. Now, I breathe for you and I both. I am her body and my own. There are ghosts in my blood and we can breathe at these depths! Swim, be turbulence, be tides. Plunge our machine bodies into the water and harness the energy of the glitch at the site of fissure: the small explosive power of a device taking a sip.

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You must learn to breathe underwater. Sink beneath the surface and open your eyes.

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There are ghosts in my bones and electricity in my spit. 

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