Hands hesitating, arms wrapped around the body. From the back one would say embraced by somebody else. But only the self is there. Maybe barely visible. It clutches, nonetheless, to something; where the fingertips touch the thin cotton of the shirt. Always something keeps them apart. It wraps itself, tries to touch; wants to find matter, seeks to remember, to feel there. From the back one would say embraced by somebody else. It’s may be all that keeps the back up. The shirt traces the curve of the upper flank and the spine, and the hand copes this curve with a small bend of the fine ligaments in the wrist. The palm will not flatten; it finds no comfort on the back of itself. This is why the fingers hesitate to grasp wholly the chest they tentatively embrace. The head looks sideways, downwards. The eyes are glassy, not in texture but in reflection. Anyone who looks would sees their own self before the other. Look up! they expect not to see anything; their expectations are in line with the thinness of their cotton clothes. Hands cannot find ease here, for they are not home.

Marked by histories that they had not written, hands none the less, try to inscribe an identity that they were not given. Moulding place. Creating space. Will they ever find one? Touch flesh and feel it like their own?
   
Once upon a time, The Word created unicity. Definitions were given, gender assigned, colour eradicated. The one and only white heterosexual, able bodied male, full of wisdom and logic, apparently, never understood that skin experiences life differently. The word, with all its death upon which it constructs itself, the flesh succeeds in exceeding it. Bodily boundaries become porous in an always already inter-relationality. Linguistic materiality. Me becoming you, a name, you, a name becoming me. I taste you in the corner of my eye. P-A- R-K- E-R are the letters that drip on a fleshy horizon. P-A- R-K- E-R is what bleeds multicoloured realities through the violence of he who speaks. P-A- R-K- E-R becomes multiple in tangibility

From where Delia Kombe came from, in fact, it had been dark for one hundred years. Every night turned into a night that turned into a night. Peoples eyesight was increasingly sensitive to the variations in the different shades of black, and it was rustling in one of these charcoal veils that she was first seen stirring. In the back of an alley, in an architectural womb so tucked away that it was warm and moist and comfortable, Delia was silently waving her arms. The first name came from somebody's nan who expired just as the wriggling burned pink creature was picked up for examination.
   
Kombe was a generic African surname who someone at the scene thought up, and it suited because the baby was definitely of mixed descent. It's hard to tell but those puffy cheeks and slit eyes could have had something Asian in them. So there was a distant reference to the Japanese seaweed, just in case.

They had been introduced at a restaurant by a friend. Felt the wrench in the gut. It's a rare feeling but we mostly recognise it; like something has been pulled swiftly downward. The unconscious repetition of bodily cycles is punctured for a second. A scalpel slicing, a slap on the face, you almost shit yourself. You become aware it could all fall apart; this person, this moment, your gut itself, has in fact no place to go; one place to go. Naturally, most people don't. Nothing will be made nor broken; it's not up to you. Things are decided and so life continues. The moment of recognition may come as a surprise to those less accustomed to instability. In the restaurant, such a moment. The sticky-looking fake black wood on those small square tables one finds in many Asian restaurants. The soup spilled; the throat scalded; the chopsticks clicked as they rolled off the edge with the nervous twitch of a finger. The lights were fluorescent and reminded each of a place in their childhood, though both would only learn from the other much later that they recalled the same place. Most people don't permit themselves to seize each other, themselves. Recognition can slide away without practice because knowledge is terrifying and better stay where we are.

The moon rises without concern for the luminosities of the mind. Gravitational pulls play games with the sun. And blanket the fear in clarity with intensity, an opaque lucidity.

An agitated tide bulged with bodies as the State stood in a statue. Flesh together manifests movement. Pulling one towards another, an other towards an other another in a political embrace. Different voices rebounded in dissonant resonance. Hands signed in conversation. We generated a vibrating heterogeneity.
   
We no longer live in forced anonymity for we have met. The system that works to segregate ceases to be effective. Gathering we feel together the violence of prejudice. All of our reflections are now in the shields, batons, tear gas and cells. Joined through multiple desires that cry. We are the invisibilised becoming visible beneath the hope of the moon.

“Shit, mate", he mumbled to no one in particular. This, for him, was a classic: forgetting the obvious, that could prevent the worst.
   
He had a turnaround moment.
   
Enough. I'll shed my identity, shed it like an old lizard's skin, and make my way with a new raw set of epithelial cells. There are areas of my brain which haven't been used since my uncles stopped eating bananas and switched to hamburgers. I'll be the new banana man. Their eyes crossed: the guy, sheepish, was revving the motor and backing out as quick as possible. He replied by pushing his sunnies off his nose with his finger. He gave him the most heartfelt deadpan. What's a car. He couldn't care less. He'd walk places.

From the window, watching him make his way down the street, the feeling was one of relief mixed with profound loss and regret. She always felt like this when people went away, even if she knew it was only temporary. She also felt like this whenever she herself left. She reached across the kitchen bench and clasped the edge of the sink with her right hand, her weight pressed into the wrist as she craned her neck to watch the last speck of him disappear out of her vision’s capacity. At this point, she abruptly turned away from the window and walked to the round table. On it, her telephone. Head bowed, she dialled. It rang out and she lowered her arm. She waited, staring blankly at the unkempt piles of papers and books before her, no recognition. All seemed calm, correct posture, etc., but within she reeled; she needed to make it clear she needed him more than anything. She dialled again. This time it connected. She felt relieved and guilty; repulsed she couldn’t deal with the loss alone. Hiding, her voice answers: “Oh, darling, sorry, I dialled your number automatically without thinking… I’ll see you later on. I’m sorry!”

“Later on”, you whisper to yourself as you put down the phone. It means everything. It means nothing. There have been many “later on”s with her. The ambiguity always keeps you there though. On the other end of the line, as they say. And you never tell her this. It’s a secret - “your hidden liberty” - that helps you believe that you are completely independent despite the obvious contrary. It scares you, reliance and waiting. “Are you free to catch up?” you say, to anyone but her.

One bouquet of words followed an Autumn rose bush of more words, which turned into winter and the moisture droplets exhaled with each vowel crystallised, forming temporary suspended ice clouds. Misarranged, the particles fell one at a time to the floor producing the subtlest cracking sound. Eventually the talking died out and it started to rain.

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Eleanor Weber is a writer and founder of EFFE, living in Brussels, Belgium.

Kate Russell is a performer, writer and PhD student (Université Paris 8) based in Paris, France.

Catherine Borra is a physiotherapist and former curator. She's interested in movement.