Mother is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. She is a stone coin floating under the buildings of Nan Madol. Before she ended up stranded, Mother remembers how she was handed from one person to another. First she was in the palms of a man with piercings all over his lips, and then she was given to a girl barely a few years old, and then she was given to a woman in a grass skirt, and then she was given to an old man who was known as the last Sandeleur. Ilsohkelekel looked at his reflection in one of the pools of water and saw how old he looked, and in an act of depression cut off his penis to kill himself. The coin Mother became fell out of his loincloth as he bled to death, and then that coin later sank into the ocean and remained there for centuries.
As a coin, Mother is still. As a coin, she feels nothing. As a coin, the water flows up and down and all around and against her. Mother is both living thing and object. Mother is young yet ancient. Mother is putrid yet evanescent.
Mother is in a trance, witnessing all of life at once as she wishes.
She asks the sacred eels why she has come to take this shape and receives no answer. She asks again and asks again until she thinks on it and decides that she can intuit the answer. All she has to do is feel the imprint of warmth from Ilsohkelekel’s hand as he received this coin for the first time.
She feels the exact same way as Ilsohkelekel felt when he ended his life.
I look so ugly.
I look so old.
I have no one to call me beautiful.
The people who loved me are leaving me, and it’s all my fault.
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