Vanessa Stauffer

To crease a sheet of paper is to change its memory, says the origami master: what was a field of snow folded into flake. A crane, erect, structured from surface. A tree emerges from a leaf—each form undone reveals the seams, pressed with ruler's edge. Some figures take hundreds to be shaped, crossed & doubled over, the sheet bound to its making—a web of scars that maps a body out of space, how I fashion memory: idling at an intersection next to Jack Yates High, an hour past the bell, I saw a girl fold herself in half to slip beneath the busted chain-link, books thrust ahead, splayed on asphalt broiling in Houston sun. What memory will she retain? Her cindered palms, the scraped shin? Braids brushing the dirt? The white kite of her homework taking flight? Finding herself locked out, or being made to break herself in.