“Sailing” (2016)
Albert John Belmont
Oil on Canvas
I. FIRST FOLD
It’s true: I value paper for writing, and you value it for folding. But when we first started dating, origami felt like a test, and I wanted to pass, to impress your Japanese dad who could speak paper more fluently than English. After you crafted a peacock and a frog, I was taking notes inside my head, standing close as you unfolded both creatures, which revealed lines and creases where they had been. I cocked my head as if reading a map or watching an amphibian dissected in biology class. Their unfolded papers—their inner worlds, like ours—could be mistaken for mountain ranges.
II. DOUBLE FOLD
When you taught your daughter to craft origami balloons by blowing air inside, I witnessed her papers shifting from two-dimensional to three, our very lungs lending shape to the world around us.
III. TRIANGLE FOLD
Sometimes I write about my travels and experiences as if you hadn’t been there. In some ways, that was true. Any page from my life is, first and foremost, alone, because I experience the moment on multiple planes. First fold: alone. Second fold: with you. Third fold: with writing, in retrospect.
IV. SOLO FOLD
How do I honor the possibility of the page—of all I can contain?
V. OUTER FOLD
I can feel it—the limblessness of the Venus de Milo, the facelessness of the Sphinx of Giza, the way absence is just one dimension caving into another.
VI. VALLEY FOLD
When I was nervous at the edge of the winter woods, you explained skating in terms of the ice being paper, remember? Side-to-side movements on the white sheet as if I were writing. After I understood that the ice was a page for the pen of my body, the blade of my skates could move more freely, dipping heartily into the ink.
VII. MOUNTAIN FOLD
A dream: my skin is soaked head-to-toe in blue ink, casting me into shadow, dunking me into mountainside dusk. Either my body is building toward the landmark of our story or it’s not done growing from the garden of mine.
VIII. PETAL FOLD
When I unfolded your golden rose to discover your note for me inside, I was surprised: the papers I write and the papers you fold could coexist, merging our DNA into one creation, our movements multiplying into more than we can see, a time-lapse blossom bursting open. We have petals for tongues, our sternums made of stems, each fingertip a leaf reaching.
IX. NEXT FOLD
I am intimidated by the act of creation—by the idea of deciding definitively what will be: me, my world, my place in it. We are folds in progress, after all, outcome unknown, an open-ended question held by open hands. What I love about us in this moment is that the next turn of our page could determine everything.
Syrah Linsley: I’m inspired by the mystical beneath the mundane, by dimensions intermingling, by the solitary heart of relationships. Although no expert in epistolary literature, I obsess over it all the same. My writing process often begins in metaphor—envisioning one phenomenon in terms of another—and I love reading pieces that prioritize possibility over conclusions. An earlier/longer version of this flash piece was longlisted for the international First Pages Prize. Online: syrahlinsley.com, Instagram @syrahlinsley.