Our “X”

Before X was X, we learned to carry things. Atlas humping the Sky, limbs in the shape of “X”. He practiced the gesture to design Universe, to become the barrier for mother land and father sky to lock lips. He solidified into static strokes nailed into the ground, with lighting surging in his bones. Then the Greeks borrowed “X” from the Phoenician letter around 900 B.C., samekh meaning “fish”, and gave it a new name - Chi denoting the sound “S”. Fish carries ocean in its scales as well. We are always seeking languages to tell the way we are carrying things in the vast empty wasteland. That’s what X is all about. 

I manifest myself through the way I lay. A human “X” spread out on my bed. My flesh and bones grow into living, breathing calligraphy. “X” can reach every corner of the realm of the page. It stretches in every direction and occupies every edge. “X” stands, fills, radiates. It is the posture to fight, also to rest, in perfect symmetry, balance with sharpness.

To write an “X” is to slaughter the skin made of paper open. No blood ever comes out from the metaphoric wound. “X” carries anger, you can’t write it without strength. Powerful straight strokes that slant. We write it with speed, with nibs like blades. It’s declaration and revenge. As a symbol, it openly states we are wrong, with the color red being hard to neglect. But it’s also a representation of the shape of stitches. The simple mechanism of healing. When we behold “X”, we learn that to be hurt and to be cured can be the same thing. 

To be “X” is to be anonymous, to be unknown. In math, we try to solve the value of “X” all the time. It’s the name for the very thing that we don’t know but desire to know. It’s the beginning and destination. I’m person X with wish X.

Sometimes our world tilts because we are carrying too many things. So does “X”. It is the tilted cross nesting my grandmother’s neck, only inches away from her heart. It can mean Christ. Fact: we give our God a nickname. Also fact: sometimes we are not sure whether we can find heavy or not. For this reason, my grandmother calls herself Christian X, and I love her. 

When we say “X”, we hiss and vibrate. It’s a voiceless velar fricative. The sound is made by placing the tongue at the back of the soft palate, like we are licking our vulnerable tissues to pronounce the weight we all shoulder. And we say it to remember the way we move, the way we break, the way we believe. 

2022.7.11