Spirit Crumbs

I ran away from home once. I was eleven years old, maybe twelve. I had everything I needed; my Labrador puppy and a fishing pole. A paper bag of dog food; Best Choice pepperonis for bait (the catfish—the big ones—they can smell it in the water).
I wanted stories to tell, and I thought that those were only to be found away from home. So I left. My optimistic sense of adventure only lasted while my internal compass remained magnetized. Not toward true North; I knew where that was, but toward Home. How the two might be related escaped me; I assumed I’d always know that Home was That Way.
Home, where my dad was mowing the lawn and my mom was planting flowers and my brother was practicing his classical guitar exercises. Where the dogs were, and the cats; I couldn't bring them all with me, could I? After all, there were nine of them.

My room too, was at home, with its jungle wallpaper and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Mosquito net over my bed, tiger posters, photographs. All sorts of things I didn't think about missing when I took off into the woods. Because I was eleven—maybe twelve—years old with pigtail braids, cargo pants with pockets full of trinkets; a pocket knife, a puppy and a fishing pole. And I'd caught seven catfish that summer. Big ones, too. I'd be ok.

My internal compass only lasted a couple of hours. The woods can be confusing, and all the grain silos in the distance look the same. I realized I didn't know where Home was, and suddenly I was desperate to get back. I knew north and south, but was Home north or south of me? I began to panic. My puppy was tired; I carried him, my fishing pole dragging behind me, hooked to the belt loop of my Old Navy cargo pants. Terrified I had actually achieved my goal of leaving Home behind, I barreled through the brush in the direction I was pretty sure I'd come from. Head down, braids torn, tears gumming my eyelashes, I shielded my puppy with my arms as I burst through the edge of the tree line. Blinking in the sun, I could just make out the silhouette of my dad waving to me from the riding mower in our back yard. I lifted a hand, waved back. I guess I found my way; I guess I never got that far. I thought I’d gone so far.

I wish I could tell my younger self to be patient. There will be so many stories. You are living them right now, even though you don't realize it. You don't need to leave—even though you will, eventually—to find them. Life will happen. You don't need to rush it. It happens too fast as it is most times.

Still though, there's something to be said for making your own stories on purpose, I think.

Memories like this are important to me when the exhaustion—the complacency—of adulthood and its struggles (some universal, some unique to me) set in. I sought adventure once. I was not deterred by discomfort or inconvenience, if the result was an experience. A memory. Something more than the average; the day-to-day. It's been a tired few years, and there are other, more responsible things I should probably be focusing on, but I'm not ready to give that part of myself up. I'm not ready to stop risking; suffering consequences for the gain of a life that feels fully lived. I don't know yet what form that can take from here, but I know that it has to be something. Home is important; Home is essential. I need it, like I didn’t think I ever would (and I’m not sure how to feel about that; I wanted to be able to be nomadic and maybe once I would have been but I’m so tired so often now). But without some adventurous pursuit, I stagnate. I lose myself. I get bored. I stop doing anything interesting or productive and I buy too many different shades of lipstick.

I need adventure in the great wide somewhere.

But I know there are stories to be told from Home, too. Stories I lived when I didn't know I was living them. Hopefully in ten years I’ll be able to look back and say the same of now. I need to make more of them happen around here. Little things, but story-things still, when I can. It’s hard to do though when I’m dealing with a certain level of exhaustion almost constantly.

If you were to uproot all the trees in the woods of my childhood home, you would unearth many time capsules; little pieces of who I was then. Seeds of who I still am. Spirit-crumbs. Well-sealed, as best as I knew how between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Some were intended to be time capsules specifically—pages torn from diaries, song lyrics, photographs, baubles and perfume samples; things I felt represented the essence of myself at a particular period of time all sealed up in a mason jar with rubber cement and duct tape. Some things I buried as casualties of the war between my strong will and my people-pleasing tendencies. What was I to do when I was enraptured by the story of a Manga series I knew I would be taken away once it was discovered that a panel or two included nudity? By the time I stumbled upon the first slip of a cartoon nipple in book number four, I was deeply invested in these characters and their fate. I finished the volume, sneaked it out to the woods wrapped tightly in plastic and tape, and I buried it on the far side of the creek. I did this with each volume remaining in the series the moment I finished them, all bought with my hard-earned allowance. With each book I buried in the woods I fell further in love with the story, and further into the resignation that I was who I was and I loved what I loved—no matter how I fought it. No matter how badly I wanted to be “good”.

After years of doubt, guilt, and self-loathing, followed by years of desperate searching, praying, broken hallelujahs and begging for acceptance that was right there where I left it—where I’d been convinced by fundamentalism to lay it down as if I didn’t deserve it—I finally realized that I didn’t have to choose between being “good” and being who God made me to be. There was the redemption I needed and the redemption I only thought I did—eventually, mercifully, I found both.
Fourteen books are buried on the banks of Pony Creek. Fourteen books and two burned CDs; a mason jar full of letters, a t-shirt, a broken laptop computer.

I’ve hidden things elsewhere too; written prayers tucked beneath the pulpit of Weatherby Chapel, little paintings beneath highway bridges, a ring I don’t remember where, messages in bottles, notes in library books. Leaving a trail of myself; more spirit-crumbs. Why this type of preservation is important to some deep-seated part of me, I don’t know.

I used to think it was just because I felt the need to document; because I had fear of forgetting. A fear of all this—all I’ve been and all I am—being lost one day to a history so much bigger than me. All these moments just passing and disappearing into the inaccessible past with nothing material to give testimony to their occurrence. Maybe it is that, some. I write too, things I don’t leave behind. I have a bookshelf with over 50 completed journals in my bedroom, all filled with the bore of one unremarkable woman’s growing-up. Maybe I’m afraid of the forgetting, but I also have an overwhelming urge to drizzle my soul out, that it might be fully realized and understood—at least by me.

I think there’s more too, though. I think I need to live a story. I think I need to live things to write later, to remember, to tell.

I’ve lost track of that lately, and without it I feel aimless. Meaningless. I’ve gotten trapped in the everyday, the practical, worrying only about how to streamline necessities. Without something to live towards that reminds me--to my very bones--who I am and what I am; some adventure to revive my wild, primordial soul...that goal in itself feels empty.

I remember when I ran barefoot on the beach in La Jolla at night. I was only there for a week, and at first I tried my tennis shoes but they sunk so deep in the sand. I timed it every night, forty-five minutes of jogging on that color-sapped strip of beach out behind the hotel so I wouldn’t get fat on vacation. I ran the stretch of darkness between one dock lamp and the next; how they seemed to grow ever further away from me as I ran toward them. Somehow I reached them each time, back and forth again, afraid to step beyond the far halos of light as if some Cthulhus waited beyond, one on the other side of each circle. I ran back and forth between the two, their imaginary tentacles bouncing me back and forth like a ping-pong ball; so hollow and light compared to the roaring, invisibly dark ocean on one side of me and vibrant expanse of California on the other.

Had women made up the old myths, Poseidon surely would have been female. What else is the ocean more like than a womb, with thriving life inside? A womb that incubated the beginnings of all life billions of years ago before the first venturing of an organism out onto dry land. The ocean is Mother Nature's womb and if it has a ruler, it's a queen.

Small and white, insignificant, I’d return to the hotel room and rinse the sand from my feet but I haven’t forgotten the feeling.

The feeling of being such a little thing, with its little agenda, scuttling on the sand by the void of darkness hovering above the roiling black sea. Small as I knew myself to be, I felt I was on the edge of adventure—of a story—and that was enough for me.

In a few months I’ll see the sea again, and I know it will feel as if I’m coming home, like it does every time. I was not meant to be landlocked; I was not meant to feel quite so safe—unchallenged, unperturbed, uninspired.

I need to do things worth writing about; worth remembering. To live a life that teaches me something, hands-on.

There’s an abandoned house nearby that I’ve been meaning to explore with my camera in-hand. I’ve been waiting for someone to come along with me but maybe I’ll just go alone. That may be adventure enough for now, though nearly every day I think of Burning Man.
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Wednesday Morning, 3 AM (a short story)

I don’t know how I ended up here. I can recount the events just fine, unfortunately. But I don’t know why I am the way I am; why I didn’t do things differently so that it didn’t have to be this way. But it does, it really does; I wish I could explain why. We never explained much between us and maybe that was my fault—most everything is—but now I’ll never have the chance.

***

I knew she always wanted out of here. I did too, but she wanted it like it was a thing that could actually happen. I think I was born already having given up, but when I met her under the barbeque tent at the revival, the hope I sensed in her was like running through a cool sprinkler on a hot day for me. We were only little girls then, but I could see it in her clear blue eyes. We giggled in the back row, and when she laughed at my jokes about the preacher’s red ruddy face, I knew she at least didn’t hate me. Her dress was crisp-clean and mine had dirt on it from the day before, but she didn’t seem to mind. My dad popped the back of my head and made me apologize for bothering her, but she said I wasn’t any bother. I smiled all the way home.

No one—least of all me—knew why she hung around with me all the time. Pretty blonde who could sing and play the piano with the chunky, mousey-haired girl who never knew when to quit.

For a while I thought maybe she was just bored—everyone’s bored here—and that was alright with me. I showed her the best place to catch tadpoles, and the spot where a mourning dove came to nest year after year, and how to hatch the turtle eggs we sometimes found by the creek. No one else had cared much for that sort of thing but she seemed to love it as much as I did.

“What are you doing?” She once asked as we sat by the pond—I think we were nine or ten.

“See these tiny frogs?” I showed her the one I held in my muddy palm, closing my fingers up again quickly before it could escape. “You find a few and throw ‘em as far out into the water as you can; whichever one makes it back alive wins.”

“Alive? What do they win?” She didn’t seem to understand.

“The race!” I exclaimed. “If they’re not fast enough, the catfish get ‘em!”

“That’s so mean!” Her eyes widened. “Poor froggies!”

For some reason, when she said it, it hit me just how true it was. How cruel. I saw the shock in her innocent eyes and suddenly I thought of all the adorable, tiny frogs I’d sentenced to death for my own amusement, gleefully watching them swim the gauntlet of catfish. Something twisted in my heart and I haven’t quite forgiven myself to this day.

Maybe it was the way I nursed the baby bunnies back to health that redeemed me in her mind. Her dog brought them home one day while we were looking for garter snakes, right after the pastures had been hayed; he had the whole nest of them in his big mutt mouth. Two of them died in the next few days, probably crushed inside by those pit-bull jaws. But the other three lived, drinking kitten formula from a tiny medicine dropper and wrapped in all the rags we could find. When they were big enough that we could let them go by the edge of the woods, we went together and she held my hand.

“Think they’ll find enough food?” She asked me.

“There’s plenty of plants for three rabbits.” I said and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. I didn’t mention all the boys and their BB guns, or the farmer’s dogs. Her hope was always like a cool sprinkler on a hot day for me.

***

It seems like it’s always hot here. The winters are just as long, and as cold as the summers are long and hot, but it’s like the Midwest is always suffocated by the memory of heat.

But you can see so many fireflies on summer nights and that seemed to redeem it all sometimes, for a moment; them and the reflection of the stars in the ponds. Little lights above, around, below. Felt suspended in space. We caught the fireflies in jars and they’d last a night or two, but we didn’t know what to feed them so we’d dump them out in the yard, dead and dried out. Like everything else in August.

“How was the brush burn? Was it fun?” She asked me one evening, when we were a little older. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. She was always eager to hear my stories, though she seemed to know what kinds of questions not to ask.

“Fine.” I said, dropping my bike and joining her on her porch. “My arms are sore from carrying all the water buckets.” It was dusk, and the coyotes were beginning their nightly ceremonies.


“They made you carry the water?” She laughed.
“They think I’d set fire to all the fields if I had the matches.” I rolled my eyes, still stinging with smoke. “I would, too. Just a couple matches, it’d all go up. Then no one would have any reason to stay here anymore and we could all just leave.” I pulled two beers out of my backpack and opened them by pressing the caps into the soft skin under my forearm and twisting, like my older brother had taught me.

“You can leave without burning everything up.” She said. She did not share my flair for the dramatic. “Just graduate, get a job, save up, and go.”

“Easier said than done.” I sighed, though a thousand reasons for that pressed against the dam of my closed lips; answers to the kinds of questions she knew not to ask. We were silent for a while, sipping our beer. We both jumped when her dog tore around from the back of the house, barking and growling. He skidded to a stop in front of the cornfield, hackles raised.

“I wonder what’s out there.” It was more of a statement than a question, as the dog snarled and slobbered at the stalks.

“He clearly knows, and that’s good enough for me.” Dogs know what happens in the insidious black. I wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “I have some tequila if you have room in your bottle now.” I held up a flask.

“Not too much…Okay, stop. Stop!” Emily laughed and pulled her bottle away. I took a swig from the flask before zipping it into the front pocket of my backpack. “You shouldn’t have that much either.” She said in a mothering tone that was only half-joking.

“I can handle myself.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“What do you think’s out there?” I changed the subject.

“Ghosts.” She said it calmly, lightly. Like a breeze; like a matter of fact that she was perfectly fine with. The porch light reflected liquid on her eyes as she stared out into the field, so that there was no more blue in them, just black and gold. The humidity was high and my eyes were bleary. The porchlight-golden haze haloed everything and it must have been the good tequila I took from my dad’s stash because I was already feeling dizzy.

“Ghosts.” I whispered, and a shudder ran through me. I didn’t mean for her to notice, but she must have, because she lay her head on my shoulder. I twisted a golden lock of her long, smooth hair around my finger, like a ring.

When we were little girls, we’d made a pact not to cut our hair until we were thirty years old. It had been my idea. She forgave me when I chopped all mine off on impulse at fourteen, but she kept hers long. I was glad she did. Meant someone could stick to something; meant someone could keep something long-term. I hadn’t seen a lot of that close-up. Everything she showed me close-up was beautiful to me.

***

She was always mothering me; I thought it was probably because she got mothered so hard herself. And I suppose she could see I wasn’t mothered enough.

She tried to talk me out of my first tattoo, the one I got from Rogelio in the kitchen of the pizza shop after hours. He was twenty years old and the assistant manager there, padding his savings with cash he brought in using the tattoo machine he bought on the internet. Said he practiced on his grandparents’ pigs when he visited them in Mexico.

“Pig’s just like people skin.” He’d insist as he wiped down the counters with Clorox. “And I clean all my tools.”
We’d watched him a few times before, while eating cold pizza destined for the dumpster. It wasn’t the best ink I’d ever seen by far, but his customers would walk out with passable Sailor Jerry’s.

One night I brought him a picture of a sparrow I’d drawn.

“Are you sure you want that right on your chest?” Emily asked from behind me as we entered the pizza shop through the back door. “What about when you interview for a job or something?”

“I’ll borrow some of your makeup.” I said, thinking more about any final touches I might want added to my design.

“I can do something like that!” Rogelio said when I gave him my sketchbook. “Yes! Good! Sit down!” He yanked on the back of a rolling chair until it reclined a bit, and I sat.

“What if you get an infection? What if you’re allergic to the ink?” Emily chittered.

I nodded to the rubber gloves Rogelio was snapping on his wrists, and the bottle of rubbing alcohol. “I’ll be fine. Have you ever met anyone who was allergic to tattoo ink?”

“No, but—“

“I’ll be fine.”

“On the rocks, on the house!” Rogelio said cheerfully as he walked up, skillfully bearing three plastic cups. I took a grateful sip of my tequila; I was nervous.

“Hold my hand?” I asked Emily. She sighed, but obliged.

After about an hour I stood in front of the grimy bathroom mirror, pulling at the collar of my shirt. Right below my collarbone, still prickling with blood, was a wobbly little bird. It was different from my drawing; it wasn’t any particular sort of bird. The lines were hesitant, almost flickering on my skin. But the color was bold and unapologetic, and I decided it was perfect.

“I love it!” I said after re-entering the kitchen. I handed Rogelio forty-five dollars, in tens and fives.

“Bueno!” His brown eyes lit up. “Keep it clean and dry!”

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” I giggled as Emily and I exited the shop.

“Shut up, he’ll hear you!” She clapped her hand over my mouth. I licked her palm. “Gross! Ugh. You’re tipsy.” She wasn’t wrong; I’d finished her tequila. “Anyway, he’s way too old for you.” She wiped her hand on her jeans.

“Four years isn’t that much.” I argued, still giggling. “You just want him for yourself, don’t you?” I tugged her ponytail.

“No! No, I—Just go home.” For the first time in our friendship, she sounded genuinely upset with me. I stopped, puzzled.

“Emily, I just—“

“Can you get home safe?”

“Yeah, but—“

“Then go.”

Not much seemed to rattle Emily to anger. I often wondered where she put her weaknesses—with most people I could see. Most people appeared to be hiding them under their chairs, hands clasped and ankles crossed, sweating and praying no one would notice. I, of course, seemed to wear mine on my sleeve. But Emily always reminded me of a placid lake’s surface on a sunny day: bright, easy and smooth. Even when she was afraid—rippled or wind-blown—she was not turbulent.

Shocked at her behavior, I left without another word.
The next day we both apologized, but neither of us said what for. Maybe we didn’t really know.

***

I had a divers’ license but no car, just the four-wheeler my brother left behind. He took the car; I made do. I taught her to drive it but she preferred to ride behind me, arms locked around my waist and face buried in my neck while we shrieked with laughter. Seventeen, eighteen maybe; the neighbors didn’t mind us barreling through their woods—we left paths for the cattle. Maybe I cut the barbed wire in a few places, but no one could ever prove it and that way we had all kinds of shortcuts. We bumped and careened through the brush and over rough ground; we didn’t have helmets but my neck protected her face and I wore a pair of goggles I’d stolen from chemistry class.

I think we felt invincible; I think we felt legendary. I think we felt like woman-kings when we’d pull up, wind-blown and brush-busted, to the Sonic from the southern field to eat chili cheese fries; me on the seat of the four-wheeler, Emily perched on the edge of a picnic table. Any boys present would flirt with her, but she’d just laugh, then jump on behind me and we’d ride back into the woods together. I’d take off fast, to blow dust in the once-arrogant faces behind us.

One afternoon, riding a little too fast for the terrain, we flipped our royal chariot. We were both thrown clear, though, and sat up laugh-crying.

“Are you ok?” We cried simultaneously, scrambling towards one another. Then, “You’re bleeding!” Once we reached one another we collapsed to the ground again, laughing.

“Your face!” She said. “Here, I’ll make it better.” Her lips brushed the scrape on my cheek.

“You too!” I giggled, and gave her a peck on the forehead after wiping the dirt away. The giggles died down as we sat there in the loam, inches apart, but my heart still pounded in my ears. Her eyes were bright, absurdly bright blue, like the pictures I’d seen in travel magazines of ocean water off the coasts of tropical islands. Nothing here, just on the Kansas side of the Missouri state line, had ever been that blue. I didn’t realize I’d been leaning towards the blue, but I must have been—our noses touched. I froze, because she froze, and then I’m not sure who leaned in—I’d like to think it was both of us—but her lips were just as soft as they looked, and close together we smelled like fresh-turned soil and hot rubber. It only lasted a second—but one-thousand-one is still a piece of time you can grasp and hold in your memory, cushioned forever there like a bright and precious jewel.

She pulled back and laughed again, a laugh like big yellow butterfly wings, then planted another kiss on the top of my head and leapt to her feet.

“Help me!” She called, climbing down into the dry creek bed where the four-wheeler lay on its side.
I took a deep breath before rising to my feet. Then, as I was brushing dirt from my jeans, I heard her scream.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I scrambled down into the creek bed.

“There!” She pointed to a spot on the opposite bank. “It’s a skeleton! I think it’s human!”

“For real?” I climbed up the bank, Emily following at a distance. I approached the cluster of bones in the long grass, my excitement increasing when I saw the curve of vertebrae that looked very human indeed. “Help me move this branch!” I called over my shoulder.

“What? No!” Emily exclaimed, hugging herself. I sighed and grappled with it myself, tossing it down into the creek bed.
“Aw, Em, it’s just a dead calf.” I said, relieved and slightly disappointed. “Come see.”

She approached hesitantly, looking over my shoulder.
“The backbone looked so…”

“I know.”

“How do you think it died?” She asked softly.

“I can’t tell.” It didn’t look broken. It seemed almost in repose there, curled on cushions of brush. Wildflowers bloomed from its eye sockets; blades of grass poked out between its teeth. It must have been dead a long time; the only creature around was a butterfly resting on a rib.

“It looks like it just…gave up.”

“It was probably sick.” I said. “Come on now, let’s get the four-wheeler.” I started walking back, but Emily stood there, staring at the skeleton.

“What if it had been human?” Seemed she was speaking more to the calf than to me.

“Come on, Em.” I took her hand and pulled her gently toward me. “You haven’t seen a lot of dead stuff, have you?”

“I guess not.” She said, and followed.

***

Gas was cheaper then, and Rogelio would let us borrow his car if we brought it back with a full tank. I’d been drawing tattoo designs for him for a percentage of his profits and the privilege of using his tattoo machine to practice on orange peels and bananas; the odd cow hide. Nothing at all like human skin, I confirmed on the night I was brave enough to try it out on my thigh in the kitchen of the pizza shop.

“That’s a lot of letters; maybe do it in two sessions, yeah?” Rogelio suggested through a cloud of marijuana smoke.

“Maybe.” I mumbled, gripping and re-gripping the machine, my foot nervously tapping the pedal.

“That’s not real Latin, you know.” Emily said. “It’ll be like you read too many books and not enough at the same time.”

“Shut up, Em.” Something about the idea of doing it myself was much more nerve-wracking than just lying still under Rogelio’s confident hands.

“You know I love you.” She teased. She’d given up on talking me out of tattoos by now. On talking me out of much at all. Seemed she knew that I was going to be who I was going to be and not even I could stop it, and that she’d decided to stick around anyway. Her unconditional acceptance revived me in that way she always did, like cool water in midsummer.
I smiled and rolled my eyes, then took a deep breath.

It was different than being tattooed by someone else. Rogelio really must have practiced on plenty of pigs and people both before he gave me that first sparrow, because even back then his hands didn’t shake like mine did. Didn’t crash the needles back and forth between too deep and too shallow and back again, with a twitch to this side or that making a small cut.

“Whoa, slow down, chica!” He tried to give me guidance, but I could barely hear him over the clench of my concentration and the flinch of my pain. “You should take a break now, yeah? Finish in a couple weeks.” He suggested.

“No,” I grunted. “I got it.”

“Are you ok?” Emily sounded concerned.

“I’m fine. Look, almost done.”

And a bit later, it was. It bled more than any of the tattoos Rogelio had ever given me, and the font was imprecise (though I’d tried for a somewhat forgiving cursive). It reminded me of my signature from the library card I had when I was eight years old, but it was legible:

ILLEGITIME NON CARBORUNDUM

Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

It stood out there in contrast against the pale skin of my thigh. I’d hoped it would look like a cheer, a rallying cry. Instead it struck me more as a desperate, hopeless plea.
I knew I was born already having given up.

“It looks good!” Emily said encouragingly. “And you’ll get better!” She hopped down from the counter. “Practice makes perfect!” Her favorite quote from her piano teacher.

“Practice makes permanent.” I grumbled, like I did every time she said that. What you’ve always been, you’ll always be. We follow trajectories. Forward motion, in one direction, for better or for worse.
But I don’t think she realized I meant all that.

***

“Sometimes I wonder what you’re thinking.” She said to me once as we lay next to each other on top of Rogelio’s car, two layers of blankets tucked up to our chins. We did this often on clear nights to stargaze, but this was the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. I wouldn’t have known about it, but a few years before she’d found out and every year since we tried to watch. We’d go out where there were only farmhouses—few and far between—to get away from the light pollution of our little town. Sometimes it was too cloudy, but this year visibility was good.

“Like, about what?” I asked, glancing away from the stars for a moment.

“Just in general.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Oh look!”

“I see it!” A bright sparkle skimmed across the navy sky, like it was being pulled by an invisible string. Then it was gone.

“I had this dream the other night.” She said to the void above us. “I dreamed that when we die, we all become one disembodied entity. All consciousness mixing and intermingling together, our beings all melting together. Feeling, celebrating, mourning, all as one. Knowing together, wondering together. In my dream, lonely people wanted to die so they could join this grand communion of souls.”

“That’s…one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.” I murmured.

“When I woke up, when I realized it was a dream…I felt so lonely. That we couldn’t know each other like that, you know? It was like I had the opportunity, and then lost it, and I’ll never get it back. Like isolation is inevitable.”

“Like, we all die alone?”

“Something like that.” She sounded so forlorn. “It just…hadn’t hit me like that before.”

Crickets and frogs filled the silence; two small meteors passed through the atmosphere unremarked upon.
“We don’t have to live that way.” I said finally, and my hand found hers under the blankets. She wove her fingers between mine and moved closer, giving me a warm smile before looking back up at the eyes of the cosmos. In the mostly-dark her eyes were navy pools, their surfaces glimmering with the slightest movement. They seemed deeper than the sky was high when she looked at me like that. I gazed at her face a little longer once she turned away, starlight making the lines of her profile glow silver.

“Not as long as we’re together.” She sighed and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, hard, bursting with things I didn’t know how to say.

We never explained much between us, and that was probably my fault—most everything was.

***

There was an altar call at her mom’s funeral, with an open casket. I’d never seen it done that way, but I guess her dad thought that’s what her mom would have wanted. I’m sure it wasn’t the same red-faced preacher from the revival all those years ago, but it might as well have been. He was just as loud, spewed just as much fire and brimstone. I could almost smell barbecue. We didn’t laugh this time though; couldn’t even sit in the same row. I wanted to; I wanted to hold her hand while she cried. But family sits up front, so I just picked a seat where I could watch her the whole time. As if my watching could protect her from the most jagged edges of grief.
I never knew her mom that well—honestly her mom never cared for me and I can’t blame her. But Emily had lost something irreplaceable, so I mourned too.

Her eulogy was beautiful. It was no wonder she took it for granted that she’d one day get scholarships to some out of state university and get away from this town. She was more than smart enough. She’d be a pianist, or a music teacher in a wealthy neighborhood. Somewhere warm; she’d talked about Florida. I guessed I’d chill with Rogelio; keep drawing tattoo designs for him. We split the profits more evenly now. Smoked them too; made out on his couch a few times while we were high. His eyes always lit up when he saw me, and I didn’t mind spending time with him like we did when Emily was practicing, or studying. He was teaching me Spanish. Once I complained about how hard it was to learn, and he stared at me for several minutes until I got the point: he’d had to learn English fast when he moved here, with no congratulations—often with mockery for his accent—and here I was complaining about a few words of his native tongue that he was teaching me with patience. He was kind. Handsome. Loved his family. Artistic. I’d definitely grown to care for him, in some type of way. He’d gotten promoted at the pizza shop; I cashiered at the general store. Maybe between the two of us we could make something decent here. Some girls in the high school said they wouldn’t want mixed-race babies, cause then their kids wouldn’t look like them, but I didn’t see how that mattered. As long as you loved someone.

Whatever that meant.

I guessed I’d just stay here like always, while Emily moved on to bigger and better things. That had always been the plan. My plan, anyway. Emily would talk about me getting into some college too; coming with her, us rooming together in the dorms like girls in a sitcom. I’d go along with her, how great that would be, but she wanted it like it was a thing that could actually happen. Her hope was as precious to me as ever…but I knew better. I knew where we each belonged, as much as I hated to be away from her. She was a citronella candle; she shed golden light and it was like the bugs didn’t bite when you were around her. She had a reason and a purpose, blessing everyone around her. It only made sense that she would take that beyond us, beyond this place. She had to.

It put me out of sorts, then, when Emily’s trajectory was interrupted. She stopped practicing. Studying. She stopped doing much of anything.

“My dad wants me to get a job.” She said to me one day, monotone, once again sitting side by side on her front porch.

“Yeah? How come?” I asked. Up to this point, her parents had encouraged her to focus on her music and academics.

“Mom—“ Her throat caught. “Mom brought in most of the money,” She took a deep breath. “We’re not sure how we’re going to be able to afford for me to leave now.” I could tell she was holding back tears.

“What about the scholarships?” I asked. “Didn’t you get—“

“No!” She snapped, then softened. “No, they’re not enough. And anyway, Dad has a lot of debt…”

“That’s not your responsibility.” I sounded overly-cynical.

“Well I’m not just going to leave him alone! He’s not like—“ She stopped short.

“Not like my dad. I know. No, it’s fine.” I sighed, and reached for her hand. As if the physical contact dissolved her foundation, she collapsed into my lap.

“I hate it here!” She sobbed. “I thought I was getting out…I thought…I miss my mom. I’ve always hated it here but it’s so much worse without her.”

“I know, I know.” And I did, I always did. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “It’ll be ok.” I whispered.

“How?” She gulped through tears.
I didn’t know, and that was agony.

***

Her depression was crippling. It looked like her dad’s was too; their once-pristine house was piled with clutter and empty take-out containers. She hadn’t invited me inside in a while, but I saw the day I came over with some THC brownies I’d hoped would cheer her up and get her to eat something. Jeb at the local greenhouse had taught me how to make them; boil the plants in a butter mixture for a good long time and then strain it—the butter’s the good stuff now. I’d never baked in my life till then, but I thought maybe if I said I made them myself she’d eat them.
When I knocked on the door, it came open a crack.

“Hello?” I called into the dim entry hall. “Em?” No one answered, but I heard movement upstairs. “Em? That you? It’s me; I have a surprise for you.” I stepped in and flipped the light switch. Their dog ran down the stairs and snuffled my hands. “Hey bud,” I said, scratching his ears. He looked thin. I poked my head into the grimy kitchen and saw that his food and water were empty. “Em,” I called in the direction of the staircase, “I’m going to feed Buzz real quick, then I’ll be up.” No answer. Maybe she was in the shower? But I couldn’t hear the water running. Then, a thump. “Emily?” I started climbing the stairs.

“No!” Finally I heard her half-sob from behind the closed door of her bedroom. “Don’t come in here!”

“Emily what’s wrong?” A brownie slid off the plate I was holding as I sped up. Something didn’t feel right at all.

“I’m fine.” She seemed to be gasping. “Don’t—“

I opened the door, and the plate fell from my hand. “Emily, no!” I fell to my knees next to her on the floor beneath the ceiling fan, amidst a pile of a rope that was still looped around her neck.

“I’m sorry!” She sobbed, crawling into my lap. “I’m sorry!”

“Oh Emily!” I hugged her to me, my tears glinting in her golden hair. “Please, please no. Never again. I couldn’t…I…”

“I won’t.” She looked up at me, red-rimmed eyes and red-ringed throat, blue eyes pricked brightly with a thousand points of grief.
My chest hurt like it was being crushed. A sob caught in my throat and without thinking I bent and kissed her. Before I had time to re-think my impulse, she was kissing me back. We clung to each other for I don’t know how long, tears mingling, crumpled there on the floor.

***

It’s not like I’d never brainstormed desperate measures before. Things I’d do to get out of here, if only I were brave enough to do them. Things only done by those who never deserved to get out in the first place. But it wouldn’t be for me. I was born having given up on myself, but I’d be damned if I’d let either of us give up on Emily. Desperate times…

I stewed as I drove around our little down, a half-drunk flask of vodka tucked between my thick thighs. “Janet’s”, read the sign of the local bakery that only stayed in business because there was no competition. The name “Janet” sounded crass in my raw mind, and sharp, like the sting of a yellow jacket. Or when you’re chewing something crunchy and bite your tongue. A name you’d expect to find in this flat little town. This town with barely-patched roads and ragged lawns, full of houses with peeling paint and blankets tacked up inside the windows with their air conditioning units that hung lopsided from the sills. Tilted lots surrounded by chain link fences that separated the dogs from the bitches, the pit-bulls from the children. Kids were playing with broken toys in stray-cat-soiled sandboxes, passed over by the vacant eyes of adults in stained clothing, cigarettes dangling from their slack, jaded lips.

My house was one of these. I parked Rogelio’s car a ways down the street and walked the rest of the way. As I went up my driveway, I guessed my dad was passed out inside; I couldn’t see any lights through the windows. My steps lightened instinctively even before I reached the door. I tried the knob; he often forgot to lock it. It turned, and I sneaked inside. Normally I wouldn’t mind banging around and making him regret another bender, but this time I didn’t want him to know I’d come in.

It was on the top shelf of the coat closet, where it always was; where he’d always take it from when he wanted something to swing around to emphasize his drunken rants. And it was loaded, just like he always swore it was. Didn’t even have a safety.
I grabbed it, a bottle of tequila, and what little cash there was from under the sink, then stopped by the phone in the kitchen. I dialed Emily’s cell.

“Hey Em,” I said as softly as I could and still be heard on the voicemail. I could hear my dad snoring somewhere else in the house. “Meet me at that blue motel in Cleveland tonight; the one we used to make up stories about. We haven’t had a sleepover in a while. Might take your mind off things. See you there.” I’d explain everything then. I hung up the phone and slipped back out of the house, unnoticed.

***

“Rogelio!” I called as I stumbled from the car outside the pizza shop. “I need a ride!”

“Why?” He asked, standing up from where he sat to take his smoke break. “You don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine.” I said, though my head was a little fuzzy. “I just need you to drive me to the liquor store, and then to the motel, the one by the Shell station in Cleveland.”

“Then can I have my car back?” He asked in exaggerated irritation.

“Sure, all to yourself.” I promised.

“Chica, what have you been drinking?” He asked when he got closer to me. “Good thing you asked me to drive.”

“Yeah, yeah; just drive.” I slouched into the passenger seat.

“What’s with the hat?”

“I’ve always loved the—“ I took the cap off to look at the logo. “Chiefs.”

“Uh-huh. You ok? You need somethin’? You in trouble?” Rogelio looked genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine.” I said, maybe a little too lightly.

“Aren’t you hot in that?” He nodded to the oversized black hoodie I wore as we pulled onto the highway.

“I’m fine.” I insisted. “Drive faster.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” I turned the radio on, and up. He accelerated, and I sped the road up in my mind; I imagined us barreling down the paved straightaway with the dead yellow grass all around. I rolled my window down, took off my cap and leaned out, the wind whipping the ends of my short hair against my face until it stung. It filled my nostrils forcefully; I pretended breathing was no effort of mine. I don’t know what was being blown away from me as I hung out the window—Rogelio was hanging onto my belt loop and saying something—but whatever it was the wind was pushing it off my skin and through my hair and far, far away from me and it felt spiritual; like redemption of everything I ever was and in advance of every sin I’d ever commit, like an infant baptism.

Out here there was always gravel somewhere; if it didn’t cover the roads it was at least on the shoulders of the paved stretches and if you weren’t careful it would grab your tires and pull; could flip you right over into the ditch. What if I grabbed the steering wheel, yanked it over? Maybe first we’d spin out; the yellow-gray world would spin around me dizzily until a tire caught the gravel and we’d skid to the side. I’d crash into Rogelio as the car jolted; our hair would stand up on end as we flipped upside-down. I’d hit my head, blood streaming into my eyes, as he yelled in Spanish and shielded his face from the shattering glass.

Maybe we’d land right-side-up, bumps and bruises; cry then laugh and hug and say “Fuck, wow, that was…that was something.”
Maybe we’d land upside-down and one of us would crawl from the wreckage and the other wouldn’t. One of us would sob and the other would sway quiet, suspended limply from the seatbelt.

Maybe neither of us would crawl free.

I kept my hands clasped tightly around my cap, eyes closed, the wind in my face until I felt us slow down.

“We’re here.” Rogelio announced. He’d parked right in front. I’d hoped he wouldn’t do that, but it would be weird to ask him to move.

“Ok, wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“You sure? You don’t look so—“

“Wait here.” I demanded. He raised his hands in surrender, and I stepped out of the car. I pulled my cap down low on my forehead. With each step toward the door, I could feel my heartbeat speed up.
I almost jumped at the jangle of the entry bell. I took a deep breath—it sounded ragged in my ears—and stalked around to the back, trying to calm the hammering in my chest. I shuffled up the aisle of red wines, pretending to read labels. Sweat was starting to soak the rim of my Chiefs cap. I mumbled some song under my breath, inhale and exhale, but I don’t remember which one.
I glanced up and I was at the cash register. The bored, bearded cashier was staring at me as if he’d just asked me a question and was waiting for an answer. I held a bottle of Cabernet by the neck, gripping and re-gripping it in one hand while the other clutched the handgun in the front pocket of my hoodie. I felt a droplet of sweat trickle down the side of my face; the edges of my vision seemed blurred.

“Ma’am?” The cashier’s voice sounded garbled.

“This.” I demanded, and slammed the bottle of wine down on its side in front of the register. A trickle of translucent red ran out from beneath the glass.

“You still have to pay for that.” The garbled voice mumbled.

“Give me all the money.” I was pointing the gun in his face, an inch from his bushy beard.

“Holy shit lady—“

“Give me it!” I shrieked. My voice hurt my own ears; I forgot how to make sentences. There were shapes and colors around me and the sunlight in the windows was bright. I winced at the ring of the register opening and tried to focus on the face before me as I stuffed cash into my pockets and my purse. My throat felt like it was closing; I could smell the cigarettes of the past ten patrons. The cashier was saying something but all I heard was a jumble. I jumped and flinched at sounds that may or may not have occurred.
I heard the jangle again, and my arm swung around. I heard words that the back half of my brain understood in a voice it took me two seconds too long to recognize. My knees probably hit the ground at the same time his body did, because the moment my finger twitched on the trigger I recognized Rogelio’s face, backlit by the bright sunlight in the doorway. Coming in to check on me.

I could hear the cashier’s garbled voice in a one-sided phone conversation as I scrambled on all-fours toward my friend, choking on my own sobs. Blood was pouring out from the gory flesh-rose in his throat. His face was already pale by the time I reached him, his mouth gaping open and shut like a fish on land.

“No no no no no” I gasped and cried, flailing for something—anything—to fix this.

“The police are on their way! The police are on their way!” I finally realized what the cashier was saying over and over.

“No no no no no” My trembling hands held Rogelio’s face as it ceased movement; as his whole body shuddered and went limp. I pushed myself away in horror, and scrambled from the store.

“Shit shit shit shit.” I tried with all my might to shove the keys into the ignition. I seemed to stab them everywhere but in. Finally, I managed it. I careened out of the parking lot. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel by the time I reached the motel. In a moment of miraculous clarity I thought to drive the car a couple of miles away and deep into a field. Then I walked back to the motel, thanking a god I didn’t believe in that I’d made the reservations in Emily’s name.
In the room, I took a shower with only hot water. Then one with only cold water. I couldn’t feel it. I could barely breathe.
The bright floral wallpaper and the white checkered linoleum of the bathroom made me dizzy. I looked up, my eyes clawing for some neutral space, but they were met with a popcorn ceiling sprayed with silver sparkles instead of the smooth white sheetrock I’d been hoping for. Suddenly, violently, I began to dry-heave. I almost knocked my head against the wall as I doubled over, clutching my stomach. I heaved myself up and spat bile into the sink, then shakily turned the water on again. I thrust my face beneath the rusty showerhead, hard water in my eyes and up my nose. Goosebumps rose over my skin. I swallowed the hard lump in my throat again and again and again. Finally, finally I felt I could breathe. I turned the water off. I wrapped myself in a towel, then in a white bathrobe thin as paper.

I’m not sure how long I sat on the edge of the plank-like queen mattress before I heard the knob turn. I leapt to my feet, heart racing, but relaxed when I heard her voice.

“They told me you’d already checked in.” Emily closed the door behind her and locked it. She’d always been wary of these cheap motels. “What did you want to meet me for?” She asked, looking quizzically at my getup.

“I just—“ I secured my robe tie. “Thought we could get our minds off things. Have a sleepover like we used to, except, well, somewhere different.”

“That’s a good idea.” She smiled.

“I meant to get some snacks for us but things didn’t really work out.” I ran my fingers through my damp hair.

“That’s fine.” Emily sat cross-legged on the bed next to me. “There’s a gas station across the street; we can get some stuff there.”

“You wanna go? I’m…” I gestured to my state of dress.

“I’ll be right back.” Emily laughed, and I felt a cool sprinkler in the heat.

It was like it used to be, sort of. We ate cheese puffs and gummy worms and by-the-slice gas station pizza. We watched late-night TV movies and made fun of them; I braided her hair and then combed it out again. We laughed about things we did as kids; silly things we believed. Avoided mentioning the silly things we still believed.
And eventually, as usual, she fell asleep. She always fell asleep before I did, but this time I didn’t sleep at all. I worked desperately to keep the inevitable thoughts at bay. I stared at the red characters on the clock.

WED 3:00 AM.

She’d know, before too long. She’d know what happened; that I really couldn’t leave without burning everything down. But I’d be gone by then. I’d just keep driving, until I found another car. Then I’d keep driving more, I guessed. I didn’t know what next. I didn’t know why I did the things I did. Why things had to turn out this way. It almost seemed predestined. As if all the bad decisions were mine, yet at the same time, I didn’t have a choice.

I’d planned to use the money to get us both out of here. I thought we’d take it and take off together, do something different, be someone different, because anything was better than what we were leaving behind. But in my panic I’d only made it to the motel with twenty-five dollars and change, plus whatever cash I’d grabbed from my dad’s—I knew that was barely worth counting. I needed every cent to get as far away from here as I could. Even then I might decide I didn’t deserve to keep taking up space, but for now…

I looked at Emily, sleeping peacefully. The moonlight through the window drained the color from everything but her hair, sparkling like spun gold on the pillow. Her chest rose and fell gently; a goddess in cheap hotel sheets. Had the events of the previous day really occurred? Had I been dreaming? Or was I dreaming now?

No, no dreams. It was time to go.

I committed the vision-like image of Emily to my memory and brushed my lips gently against her forehead. In a few hours the sun would rise, and I meant to be gone by then. I dressed quietly, silencing the jingle of Rogelio’s keys in my palm, and slipped out into the street-lit dark.
.
.
.
.

Afterfire

In February of 2016 there was a fire, though nothing of ours burned. Some of our neighbors’ things did; their things and their homes, a dog. I cried, though our cat was safe in the car and our python survived, too. We were smoked out, my husband and I, and had to throw lots of things away. Find a new place to live.

The fire was over a year ago but still, while looking for things, we ask each other, “Did we replace that after the fire?” And neither of us know, but we’re too exhausted to look.

Because it’s been a long year, and some ruined things that you thought were so essential--sometimes you lose them and when you lose so many all at once it’s hard to remember how many you gathered back up. And then you know you’re missing something but you’re not sure what but…something…so maybe you didn’t need it that badly after all?

There a lot of things that seem essential that you find you can live without, if you have to. You make do.

I have a lot but at one point I thought I had almost everything and as I move the laundry from the washer to the dryer I remember us that night under the neon lights at the Louisburg Sonic. I still remember what you wrote on my arm with a black ball-point pen (or was it blue?) while we laughed.

We thought we were legendary, didn’t we? Old souls; older then than we are now in some ways, I think. But the small towns weren’t enough to hold the two of us, and we were too much for each other as we expanded outwards, our centers pushed further and further apart until the distance was too much. Sonic is just a place to get mozzarella sticks now, while passing through.

I don’t pass through so often these days. It’s a long drive and I’m often too tired.

I’m too tired for lots of things, and I don’t think I turned out like anyone hoped I would, myself included. I like my tattoos, though, and the cowlick that makes my hair stand up a little in the back when it’s cut a certain way. I’m glad injustice makes me angry; at least I can say that about myself, even if I can’t do much about it. At least I can say I am upset by the urgency of need and my utter mediocrity. I only have the excuse that I’m cut off at the ankles. That’s a metaphor but honestly sometimes I think it’d be a decent trade. Swap the chronic diseases for some prosthetics. I don’t say it lightly; I’ve had over a decade to consider which disabilities I’d rather deal with. You know, hypothetically, should I strike a bargain at a crossroads somewhere.

There’s so much I have but I’m allowed to pray for this still, right? When I remember? These days I forget because now it feels like asking God to turn the sky green. As the years went by normalcy separated from me and I picked at it anxiously; it fluttered to the floor bit by bit until it was dead and gone and underneath I was raw. Every little poke and prod hurt me. There are calluses now but it’s been so long I don’t remember what it’s like to feel truly well.

It’s been a long year (and two months), but these last few days I’ve been feeling better. Every spring I feel like I’m coming up out of the ground again but maybe this time it’s for keeps; maybe I will stay above it and bloom for a season. Maybe the sunlight won’t be too harsh this time. I know I have to step gingerly. Do it right; do it right this time. Be careful, don’t live more than a certain amount of life each day or all my progress will be undone and who knows how long it will be before I get to feel my horse’s gait beneath me again, or laugh one shimmering night without paying in days.

It’s so precise and unpredictable, and I can’t do it by myself. Thankfully I don’t have to. But what do you do, when you’ve seen no model for this? Love in the time of illness, when illness is all the time? You say you knew what you were signing up for, but hell if I knew it would be quite like this; that quite so much would be in your hands for so long. For almost three years now I’ve told you some variation of “It won’t always be this way.” I hope I still believe that. I think I do. Surely if I do it right this time.

During the last meteor shower you lay beside me in the pickup bed, out in Louisburg. We passed the Sonic where I sat with my friend once but we didn’t get any mozzarella sticks; somehow you and I are different. Our expanses don’t push each other away. We can grow around each other; with one another. Change and know and doubt and celebrate and despair and somehow still fit. I guess that’s how there’s always room, but it’s cozy, too. The air outside the blankets we were under was chilly and I tucked my toes under our greyhound near the tailgate; he eyed me, uncertain of this arrangement but refusing to be left on the grass. I could tell you were asleep from your even breathing, and I would have woken you except the meteors weren’t coming so often anymore and I knew you had to work in the morning. The spray of stars was beautiful though, out there where there’s no light pollution. In the crisp air with the lid off the sky and my bones resting—no weight on them and my mind clear for once—there was a feeling of limitlessness. I almost cried because it was so beautiful, but also—I knew—so rare and fleeting.
All the same I hope for more this spring, as I make some changes; a weight lifted, a cleansing burn. The kind of fire that cleans up, not the kind you have to clean up after. Maybe this will be the year.

A Natural History

It’s been a long time since I’ve written much of anything. For a while now I’ve felt like I’m out of quality things to say. Five dollar words? Are those the expensive ones? I forget. But I’ve been thinking about a lot of things; who hasn’t these days?

When I can’t sleep, I think…were there no other life on the planet, and I knew this without a doubt to be true, would I still be afraid of the dark? It’s never been nothingness that scares me; it’s what might be hiding in it.

I’m sort of a realistic pessimist so of course I believe the end of the world will happen eventually, but I’m not an alarmist so of course I don’t believe it’s happening now. I’d probably deny it right up until the heat death of the universe. Come on people, don’t be so dramatic. Sparks rain down from the sky; has the apocalypse begun? Or is it just the 4th of July? What if the apocalypse began beautifully? With lights and color and music? Would we all stare in awe instead of running for our lives? Would we check the dates on our smart phone calendars, google to make sure it’s not some holiday? Decide it doesn’t matter; have viewing parties for the mushroom clouds as if that’s never gone badly before.

The uncles talk about pickup trucks and the little cousins’ glowsticks are fading as more stars come out. Smoke hangs in the yellow light of a sparking firework fountain; people carrying Styrofoam plates are black silhouettes against it. The air smells like sulfur and burgers; sweating potato salad. There are fireworks in the sky too, red white and blue and the lawn chairs press patterns into the backs of thighs left bare by short denim cutoffs. What could be wrong here? In Syria the bangs are bombs but here they’re pretty lights and if the end were ushered in like this, would we ever even know?

See? I told you it was nothing. I told you we’d all be fine. Until we all die.

Mass extinction.

It wouldn’t even be that bad, prehistorically. We’re only one species. It wouldn’t hold a candle to the Big Five. Maybe ours would be particularly remembered, like the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction—the one that killed the dinosaurs. History tends to remember the awesome and the violent; the creatures and events that take the raw materials of this experiment of life and gouge into them hard “I was here”. I was ugly or beautiful or powerful or great or evil it doesn’t matter but I was here and my claw marks are deep and that is what will survive it all; that’s what will survive the next Great Dying. Cause something will evolve again to see it.

If the sun doesn’t explode first.

But I’ve already said I’m not an alarmist. It’ll probably never happen again. I mean, we’re invincible, right?

There have been a few mass extinctions within me, though—of parts of myself, of hopes and even of fears—one I bet I could even call The Great Dying. I’m sure it was my lupus diagnosis in 2006. I’m sure that’s when it all imploded and I scraped on with just 4% of what I was before. It’s been ten years, this year. Sounds like a long time, doesn’t it? It feels like it too, except I still don’t know how to deal often times. If only I had millennia to adapt.

I don’t have that; I have about as much time as anybody else, as far as I know right now, which I’m grateful for. But for some time now I’ve had a few more kinks to work out than your average middle-class white girl.

But for the last couple years I’ve tried the stress method for adapting to life with chronic illnesses; that one where I just stress about things and get paralyzed and overwhelmed. And then I stress some more and don’t end up doing the things I really want to do. It’s so hard to scrape and claw beauty out of raw materials. What if it’s all just floating out there in some 5th dimension, waiting to be discovered? Predetermined? Finite, first come first served? What if, as I sit here tired and overwhelmed and paralyzed, I am missing them, the things I could have made—letting them slip through my fingers because my resolve didn’t come at the right time and just like that…my potential is gone? So I worry about lost productivity and creativity…and I people-please in the meantime.

It’s not working super well.

I’ve been told a lot of things recently, not all of them nice or helpful. But one thing I was recently told was to work on rediscovering who I am—and who I want to be—apart from some of the striving I’ve been doing towards things that I really don’t have much control over. I like that advice. It gives me a little bit of a foothold in shifting sands. They might never be still; there’s been a hurricane on Jupiter since who knows how long before 1644 and the universe is constantly expanding and not even the constellations are truly permanent; why should I expect predictability?

But to work on becoming more myself, for myself…that I can do. It’s a place to start; a place that isn’t “hurry up” or “be better”. Maybe that’s how growth happens—evolution, adaption—after disaster. Over time, trial and error, and eventually…just figuring out how to thrive.

A Little Limbo

I’m alone in the country on this chilly morning. A good half-hour away from civilization, on the far end of gravel roads made slushy and by the rain. The ruts grab car-tires, beckoning them into the ditches on either side. Drive slow, hold the steering wheel steady and you’ll get here alright. The bottom half of your car will be the color of mud but you’ll get here. I did, from my apartment in the city last week.

I fled a fire, my cat and I. I ran from the apartment, clutching her to my chest. We ran through billows of stinging smoke and past the crackling heat of tall flames, out into the cold late morning. She cried and I trembled as we stood on the curb opposite the building, watching it burn. The flames were a reverse waterfall of gold and orange and red, flowing and roaring and snapping from ground to rooftop. I would have thought the smoke would be gray but it was a sickly yellow-white, pouring from every crack and seam in the building: roof, windows, vents. Firemen ran back and forth from their trucks, long strides in their heavy gear. Footsteps that should have been pounding were drowned out by the roar of the fire and the guttural hiss of fire hoses; the wailing of sirens. The firemen battered down the doors of the apartments that were burning and charged inside, knocking out windows and cracking the walls open. The force of the water from the hose knocked loose some smoldering siding. Beneath all these methods of destruction, the structure crumbled before my eyes. I stood shivering on the curb, praying the fire wouldn’t spread twenty feet to the right, across the breezeway to my apartment. But after fifteen minutes that felt more like hours, the fire was under control and slowly, slowly diminishing.

Eventually the smoke and flames were all gone, leaving a gaping hole that revealed the charred bones of the building. Dirty water and sooty extinguishing foam dripped from the ragged edges. A couple sat on the curb, crying in each other’s arms. They’d lost their home, their possessions, and their dog.

I’ve heard it said that fire cleanses but everything there just seemed a gritty, smoky mess.

But I woke up here this morning, clean country and fresh air, house empty except for five animals—two dogs and three cats. The presence of a third dog still lingers—I almost expect to see him stretched out behind the sofa when I walk past to get my tea—but I know he’s sleeping in the ground outside under my favorite tree. I know he can’t feel the cold, but all the same I hope he’s buried deep enough that the edge is taken off the chill. I can see his resting place from the window. He is not far away.

There’s debate about whether or not pets will be in heaven but I don’t see why not. I wouldn’t put it past the God who blessed us with them.

I know you’ll be there but there’s debate about whether we’ll share the same love we have now. I wish it would be the same but maybe it won’t be. Either way, I hope we don’t fly past each other in eternity.

I guess it makes sense that nothing lasts forever. I live in rhythms, not routines, and rhythms are subject to shifts and changes. One beat always in harmony with the last but by the end, it’s nothing like it was in the beginning. I feel a section ending, the hum between the fading of the last notes and the rising of the next.

I wonder what’s going to change and it’s a relief, really; I’ve marinated too long in myself. Pruning with my thoughts, being numbed by the temperature of my feelings. I’m ready for something new, even something small.

I’ve been displaced by smoke, and now I’m waiting for a spark.
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Our Algebra

The world is a beautiful place, its lines and curves and corners; the shapes it makes. The way it presses into itself and then lifts away; the way we lose and gain and lose again. I know it’s beautiful and the Christmas tree is lovely but outside it’s cold and gray and the hot tea isn’t helping this time. A beer instead, maybe, but the calories…

There were things I thought would never change. I thought they were immovable facts of the universe, inevitable and constant like mathematical equations and their answers. In class we found out our mistakes mid-semester. Ultimately, you got an A and I got a B+ so really it turned out fine, jealous as I was. By the end we’d learned the process; the how’s and the why’s of it. But in the algebra of us, I guess we never really figured it out. We made our calculations to imitate the answer everyone else seemed to be getting, the one that must have been from the back of a book no one bothered to give us. We tried to solve for x but we didn’t know that first you have to add and subtract what’s in front; divide and multiply. It was in parenthesis and we thought that meant that it was secondary but really it was foundational. We didn’t know how to look so different and still equal each other; how to reconcile my lengthy numbers and steps and transitions with your bold, singular symbol. We tried over and over and over. At first it looked like it was working; the numbers were falling into place. We wrote things down. We showed our work. When things stopped making sense we went back to the place where we knew we had it right and started fresh again. But at some point I guess we thought we were right when we weren’t. I guess we blew past that first mistake, and the second and third, and by the time we finally realized how far off we were it was impossible to tell where exactly we went wrong. We floundered for a while, reworking equations we knew were inaccurate. Eventually we came to two different conclusions, each convinced of their inerrancy.

And for the first time I’m beginning to think that maybe I don’t equal X at all. At least, not anymore. I’m also beginning to think that maybe I should have realized that a long time ago. Over and over I reworked myself, to make our friendship make sense; to make you want it to make sense, too. You don’t, but at least I can say I tried.

Still I’ve saved every piece of paper, the scraps of us; notes and pictures and cards, wrappers from presents and candy bars. I’ve kept it all, just in case someday we find what we were missing. Just in case someday you want to try again.

But I'm not holding my breath anymore.

Revival

I’ve been needing the autumn; needing a break from the sun stabbing hot and bright into my eyes. I thought that’s what I needed, anyway. I felt that the heat had numbed me and that it was the sweat trickling down my back that subtly irritated my mood. But now I think maybe it’s just me. A few months ago I wrote that I thought I would be a saner person when summer arrived. I was wrong; I stayed the same as I was last winter, if not nestled even further down into the vaguely sour haze I had been hoping to escape. I got my hopes up for fall, too, but nothing’s happening so far. For some reason, every time the season changes I think that I will change too. As if a new view out my window would change my perspective; as if the change of weather would awaken some sense of life and motivation hibernating deep down inside me.

I’ve heard from a couple people now that I’m not who I used to be. I don’t know if they’re really right or not, though I know some things have changed. I’m more tired than I was, and not as easy on the eyes. I guess I don’t create as much as I used to, and I guess I’m a little more raw these days; sensitive. Like the fleshy, vulnerable body of a snail that recoils suddenly into itself at one little poke. And then only very slowly creeps back out of its shell.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong; what exactly is making it more difficult for me to do the things that I feel define me. I’m not sure what I need in order to get back to where I was. Who I was.

Maybe I need to shrink. Maybe I need to accept “where I am”. Maybe I need to get out of my head. Maybe I need more space, or natural light. Maybe I need to do more. Maybe I need to do less. Maybe I need balance, or supplements or essential oils or more fiber in my diet or less red meat. Everybody tells me something different.

Maybe what I need is a big white tent in the sun, folding chairs dodging cow patties set up on the flattened grass in front of the plywood stage and wobbling podium. Styrofoam plates slippery with the bottled barbecue sauce dripping out the backs white bread buns and smeared on the chubby cheeks of children dressed in their wrinkled Sunday best; potato salad sweating like the red-faced preacher with the New King James Bible in his hand. Maybe I need to put on a calico dress and an ill-fitting bra and join the fat ladies belting out Amazing Grace. Should I sway and clap (just ahead of the beat), or raise my hands toward the meeting of the tent poles? I should close my eyes, of course, and throw out an occasional contribution to the waves of scattered “Amens” that briefly swell after every utterance of Jesus’ name, Amen. Maybe then the faith will come trickling back in like water, with the hymns and pleas to the sinners to repent; with the lukewarm grape juice and broken water crackers and the offering plate overflowing with flapping paper bills weighted down in the middle by the only kind of change that can be produced in an instant; counted out to be worth something quantitative. The only kind of change I can muster. Maybe I need the charismatic congregation; the unquestioning belief that that fleeting feeling in my chest is the Holy Spirit who lives in my heart, wandering my arteries and making my ventricles a resting place. Maybe after the preacher asks everyone to fold up their chairs and stack them at the front, I need him to clasp my hand in both of his and say to me “God bless you” as the a cappella choir sings the most exuberant worship song in its repertoire and everyone mingles while they exit the tent, filled with new resolve and hope as if it will last; filled with passion and eager to spread the Good News.

Maybe I need to join them; maybe I need to get swept up.

Maybe I need a revival.

That’s really all I can think of, at this point.

But I’m still open to suggestions.