The post title is both an appropriate description of how we spent part of our weekend and a metaphor for my life in general — in this case, with the fish being played by me and the snake being played by life.
I can't blame her. I'd choose Team Snake, too.
In case you're feeling peckish: new post from me over at DadCentric — Up To The Moon and Back.
That's all I've got right now. GO BACK TO YOUR HOMES. THERE'S NOTHING MORE TO SEE HERE.
I could try to explain the rationale behind this image, but at the end of the day all you need to know is that when you combine evil genius Adam P. Knave, PhotoShop and even the tiniest sliver of inspiration… terrible, terrible, terrible things happen.
And what I came to understand was this: The After is only a reflection of The Before. Wrapped in filters and soft focus, hiding the sharper edges that once drew blood or left us weeping, gasping for breath, struggling to find the reason embedded in the agony. It is a shimmering star of splintered glass bound by layers of fingertouch gossamer and immaculate cotton, an eternal, refracted interpretation of those moments where once we struggled to perceive the splinter of light woven into the barbed wire.
It was startling, that first breath, after those long moments when the world had spun in mad circles of centrifugal force and the ground rose so swiftly to meet us and I held my daughter's hand so tightly – so very, very tightly – and I tried to speak, to say her name, to push the words past the immeasurable press of gravity against my lungs and that growing, terrible silence and then: (eyeblink) there I was. Sitting in that small office, a halo of fluorescent lights ringing the doctor's head as she looked me in the eye. Parted her lips. And with a single word set free the doves: unleashing a torrent of emotion that began with an approximation of relief and then instantaneously spiraled into a cyclonic double-helix of joy and ecstatic revelation that threatened to tear the room free of its foundations and lift us, weightless, beaming, overcome by the moment, towards the heavens or someplace very much like heaven. I felt the waters break free and spill down my cheek, and I reached up to wipe them away with the back of one hand as I reached for my wife's with the other, the infinitely fractionated angles in the diamond on her fourth finger capturing and reflecting the light with a brilliance I don't know I'd ever seen before, and then we both looked to our son and and he looked back at us – catching our gaze, his eye contact strong and steady and unwavering, his own smile warm and knowing, two and a half and entirely lit from within – and said, "Can we go home now, Mommy?"
(this was)
And there I was: standing, blinking into the darkness, heart pounding so overloud I wondered if it might burst through my chest, toes gripping the thick woolen weave of the carpet as if trying to find the purchase to keep me upright and in place as I struggled for sense and clarity – my head still thick with sleep – and brought the phone to my ear, the air still vibrating with its sudden clarion cry, and my instinct (always: it was always my first instinct) was to try to quiet the moment, to undisturb the night and free you all to remain safe, secure, snug in your beds, but even then realizing that you were not there and glancing sideward across the vast, empty expanse of bed to the amber glow of thin numbers on a clock as a voice I did not know spoke my name and I said, "yes" and it was a woman and she gave me her name and the police department she worked for and the name of the hospital and said there'd been an accident (my heart so loud, I thought: she must be able to hear this, on her end of the phone) but that you'd been admitted and were stable and were asking for me and I was suddenly overcome with terror and gratitude and couldn't stop telling the woman thank you, thank you, thank you, thank
(this was not how)
And there I was, in the autumn sunlight, the air crisp and perfect and the ground beneath my feet a shimmering patina of emerald and reddish gold as the pine needles embraced the cooler joys of the season and drifted from the higher airs to the embrace of grass and earth, and I heard the sound – that clear, resonant sound that only accompanies a clean strike – and I looked up and saw the ball hurtling toward me and without thinking, acting on pure instinct and glad animal movements, I leapt into the air and trapped it against my thin chest, arching my back in perfect time to absorb the impact and kinetic energy, and then both ball and I fell to the ground and with practiced grace I tapped it slightly to my right and then – my left arm rising into the air in counterbalance – my right foot snapped forward and collided with the leather hexagon I'd targeted, the one just slightly off the ground, and the ball rose and arced and then came down across the yard just a foot in front of you, Dad, and you jumped back a bit to field it cleanly and then it was like you'd lost your footing and you came down on your hands and knees as the ball skittered past you and I laughed, because you'd fallen and it was funny, and for a moment you froze there on all fours, your head hanging down, and I waited for you to get up and I was just about to say your name when your face rose and I saw you smiling, embarrassed but laughing at yourself, and you said, "I'm okay, buddy," and I laughed again and you got up, you got up, you got up and jogged lightly after the ball and the air was so crisp and the day so beautiful and then we played some
(this was not how it was)
And they tumble by, one after the other, flowing in time not quite real, softening the blows and cushioning the impact as if trying to salve each and every (I remember) each and every (I remember them) each and every moment that had broken me (I remember them all) irrevocably. They tumble by, offering fresh sweetness and grace each and every time, but I remember. Am I supposed to remember? Am I supposed to recognize the needles hidden in the candy smooth shell? Am I supposed to recognize these undiscovered countries of pain and regret buried deep within these moments of what was not?
What it is is what was not. A reflection. A refraction, through an imperfect lens. Moments tumbling by that I can see and experience and feel but know were never mine. A hell of my own making, I think, and the idea almost makes me laugh. Because I made none of it. But I am here. I am always here.
And then the moment begins anew.
• • •
This post was originally published on PoliteFictions as part of a thematic series built around the idea of The Afterlife.
There are nights when I dream you whole.
When I imagine the myriad twists and gentle curls of your sulci as ocean: fluid and shifting, capable of surging into and over themselves and, in their course, reshaping these chasms of synapse and chemistry into a new world where the familiar taste of salt is only a memory — and where memory and language shift and shimmer and coordinate together as one and this…
this now, this endless now, and the terror of all that lies beyond,
recedes, at last, a blood-dimmed tide pulling silently from the shore.
The metaphor is not lost, not here, not when we greeted you with open arms and open hearts, brought you into our home and our lives aloft on feathers – we'd imagined feathers, downy and soft and infinite, borne of angels and lighter than air, floating free as snowfall and surrounding and embracing and lifting you up, effortlessly, through the subtle passage of years, our hearts wild with hope and wonder – a ceremony of innocence we'd waited trimesters to share together, us three, alone and awake and astonished at the promise of all we might create together.
Hope is a cruel thing.
Even when not given voice, the slippery forms of letters spilling over tongue, it is the spun sugar fleeting grace of baby's breath in winter air — the illusion of substance and depth sliding forevermore just beyond the farstretched reach of soft fingers with tiny nails, seconds away from being grasped and molded with skill and intuition and strange magics into a life that demands celebration. If only we might reach a bit further. If only the breeze might shift.
And it is, that, still, after a fashion. These infinitesimal steps and giant leaps, tender and hesitant and uncertain but brave beyond any bravery I'll ever know. These subtle moments when we sense ripples across the Sea of Tranquility. These thrashing, spasming, awkward hours when we wait and know there is a balance to be struck, and it is a price worth paying no matter how steep the exchange.
Do not imagine me ungrateful. There has been joy, scattered across the glacial motion of years like brittle seeds on cold earth. I count them back, one by one by one, a baker's dozen of birthday cakes and picture books, your face growing longer and leaner and aglow with fresh delight each time the paper comes apart and you find the gorilla's face looking back, round as the moon, hiding his grin as he steals the zookeeper's keys. I know your joy. I know it is real.
But long after you settle into sleep, after your eyes close and the stresses and torments drift away and you are free to follow the minnow-quick currents where they lead, and your mother collapses into a tangle of thick blankets and dreams she never shares, I lie in darkness. And at times, I find my way back.
Before the sun dimmed to gray. The grass faded to gray. The skies, my skin, the sound of your mother's voice. When I could feel the warmth of something great filling my lungs like a sudden burst of seafoam and saltspray, the world shifting cerulean and then amniotic, baffled from the concussive impact of light and sound and the knowledge that pathways may lose their way, grow tangled and die on hidden thorns.
To that night when your eyes opened and you howled at the world and the windows shook with your announcement, your statement of purpose: I am here, I am here, I am here. And we heard you, and we knew you, and we three – together – faced a horizon breathtaking in its scope, limitless in its perspective, wrenching in its beauty.
In those moments, it feels like enough.
And then I awaken, to the gray moments before the dawn. A Caliban, monstrous and broken by worship of a failed god. Clutching at the remnants of all that was lost, or that I might once have dreamed real.
and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.-The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2
• • •
This post was originally published on PoliteFictions as part of the series "The Alphabet of Regret."
This isn't what I'd intended. Certainly not what I'd planned, in the grand and delusional way that we spin our hands through the air and then arrange the whirling motes of dust and wonder into the dream of who we'll become, what we'll do and where we'll experience it all. What's the phrase? Man plans; God laughs?
Laughter may be appropriate. Despite all efforts to the contrary, I have found myself living in the same town where I grew up. Raising children on the same streets – beneath the same sliver of night sky and broad sunshine – where I myself was once a child. These thick green grasses, and thick canopies of broad maple and spindly pine, rising and falling and bursting into color and fading into the slow, glorious descent of warmth into winter. I remember them all: the smell of a hot summer morning, the humidity rising from the grass to fill your lungs with the strange weight of saturated air. The aroma – arresting, angular and almost exotic – of pine needles mounting atop of one another, tangled by rakestroke and the geometry of collision into a golden range of gently arcing peaks, pure and perfect in the autumn sun, awaiting only a small body to launch heavenward and then collapse, giggling, screaming, howling with victory, into its cushioned arms.
It has changed, of course. The town, as towns do over the years. Or maybe it is as it always was, and it's only a perception of change that reflects the eyes that see it. Astigmatic. Weary. Color fading around the edges. Maybe, someday, my children will return here, and with eyes I hesitate to imagine they will see what they see, and remember what they do not. They will see these roads and look back on the lives that coursed through them. Their own. And others.
• • •
It is an early summer morning. A Thursday.
He is riding his bike. It's a 10-speed, and as he works his way up the hills he drops the gears down smoothly. Listens to the chain as it leaps from sprocket to sprocket, catching and taking hold with effortless certainty of purpose like a young child's hand as it grasps one rung of a jungle gym, then swings with precision and perfect kinetic grace to the next. His thin legs peddling, spinning in perfect concentric arcs, propelling him forward with steady intent and purpose. They have grown stronger, this past year. Running track. Running laps for football. Exploring his range of motion, and potential. Still slender, but finding new form.
The morning is warm, the air heavy with the memory of dew already evaporating beneath the steady rise of an early July sun. Tomorrow is Independence Day, and as he slices his way along the sidewalk – his bike a blade, cutting through the shadow and sunshine, the steady thrum of rubber tire on hot stone lending a humming undertone to the morning ritual of traffic burr and crowsong – he thinks: tomorrow, at this time, I will be sleeping.
It is 1986. His name is Adam. In another half a mile, he will arrive at work.
• • •
The Big Roar. It's an appropriate title, given the frenetic, soaring guitar chords and frenzied drumming and loud, angry, jubiliant vocals bursting from my speakers and spilling from my windows. It's mid-April, but in New England spring is just arriving — and on this beautiful Friday afternoon, I am welcoming it with open arms: windows down, sunroof back, sunglasses on and stereo in action. Today, it goes to 11. I am not singing along, both because I don't know most of the words and because the singer is a Welsh woman hitting notes my own throat is not capable of generating, but my heart beats in time with the music and the sun pours down through the glass and open windows and the sky is a thrilling blue and for that moment I'm doing nothing but living in the moment, and it is glorious.
The work week? Is over. Early. My wife is on her way home on an early train, and then she will pick up our son. I am on my way to pick up our girls, and then spirit them away to the neighboring town and the small storefront that is home to the finest pizza we have ever known. And then our open windows will greet the swirling air with aromas of rich garlic and tomatoes, molten cheese and crisp eggplant, and we will all meet together at home and begin the weekend with good food and a good beer, sitting in front of a movie and lost to a deep and fleeting contentment.
The hill crests, and I begin my descent down the highway.
• • •
It's funny, almost. How well he knows these streets. It's been only two years since he moved north from Connecticut, from the only home he'd ever known. But he's found his place, here. Found people who accept him, despite his Yankees t-shirts — a dangerous proposition in the heart of Red Sox Nation, but one he addresses so guilelessly, without ego and with humor, that it doesn't matter, those years elsewhere don't matter, and he fits in. He's found classmates and friends who share his intelligence and curiosity, and who laugh when he insists on calling himself "Ax." At first, we think it's because he's trying to sound tough, but then he explains: it's after Pete Axthelm, a New York sportswriter and NFL commentator. It's a New York thing. We don't understand, but it doesn't matter. We watch, with some surprise, in his second year in town as he joins team after team, a new one for each season, and begins high school by inventing and reinventing himself as an athlete. We listen, as he tells us about the work he does for his Temple, and all that he'd done for his Temple back in Connecticut.
He is 15, and in the process of becoming. Feeling his way through it, best as he can. Better than most, really. He's got a sense of purpose that few of us can match. Ideas, and goals. Drive.
He knows that 15 means that next summer is 16. And he will take driver's ed, and then go for his license. And then… Adam has plans.
It's a little before 7am on a hot July morning, but he is biking through town. On his way to work, at the DPW. He is spending the summer doing landscaping, trimming bushes and cutting down branches and mowing lawns and repainting the football bleachers. Out in the hot sun, every day, sweating through the hours. Because next summer, he will be 16. He will get his driver's license. And then. Then. He will buy a car. And it will feel like man taking his first steps on the surface of the moon.
• • •
The road crests, and as the descent begins and I pull my foot off the gas I see the curve of the highway and the Y-intersection at the light ahead. To the left, the highway pulls forward in front of the Fire Station and the Department of Public Works, dipping beneath a bridge before rising again toward the east, toward Boston. To the right, a cut-through of a few hundred yards to another light, and a merge onto the other numbered route. My daughters, another 10 minutes down that road.
It's a terrible merge. A failure of civic engineering, really. The other route is an artery, old, overused, thick with the slurry of early rush hour traffic, each vehicle a drifting corpuscle, twisting slowly through bottleneck after bottleneck. Eastbound traffic backs up blocks to the west. Westbound traffic backs up blocks to the east. And traffic inbound from the highway backs up and up and up, along the full length of the cut-through before spilling back onto the highway like a tide reversing against itself.
I am in the right-hand lane, turn signal on, as I pull to a stop behind a large green SUV. A Chevy. I'm six or eight cars back from the intersection, six or eight cars removed from my turn. The song on my stereo comes to an end, and for a moment there's only the sound of my engine, and the steady clicking of my turn signal, and the noise in my head as I weigh my options. I count them off in time. One, two. One, two.
• • •
He leans left and leaves the sidewalk for grass, carving a thin arc through the edge of a small park to the cut-through road. He's almost there. With three or four more pedals, he will traverse the length of the cut-through and pull to a stop at the edge of the highway. And then: one more day under the sun, before a taste of freedom. A three-day weekend. Celebrating interdependence, with family. Finding a few hours of independence, with his girlfriend.
A girl. A friend. Who is kind of his girlfriend. Who is becoming his girlfriend. Thick, red curls and freckles and a deep, throaty laugh and a smile that… man, that smile.
Maybe they can go for a walk or something. Get some ice cream, and see the fireworks behind the town hall. Just the two of them.
One more day. He's almost there.
• • •
The traffic is not moving, so I consider option #2. Pulling around, staying on the highway for another mile or so, and then taking a later exit and cutting back toward the girls. Easy enough.
I glance over to the side mirror, and see a handful of vehicles hurtling down the hill in the left lane. Maybe three or four cars, and then a long break. I've got a couple of feet in front of me – enough space to move – so I put on my turn signal and twist my neck, back and to the left. Watching the traffic, waiting for my opening. Making sure there isn't someone flying out of nowhere to fill the lane.
It's good.
As the last car buzzes past, I shift my gaze back in front of me — and just as I begin to move, I see that the Chevy in front also has his signal on, so I hit the brakes and wait a second for him to pull out, and as he does that I glance behind again and make sure there's no one coming and then look back ahead and pull out behind him and he accelerates into the lane and I hit the gas and my eyes flicker up for a second and I see that the light ahead is green.
* * *
He looks up and sees that the light is green, allowing traffic to move from the cut-through and across and up onto the highway, heading west. But there are no cars, and so he can see a clear pathway across the four lanes to the fire station and the DPW beyond.
It is so warm, already, and he is almost there, and the light is green so he picks up speed – and with that speed, the air feels a little cooler against his face, through his thick black hair and against the skin on his legs – and drops his body down low against the handlebars and heads into a sprint for the finish line and he is so close, so very close, and he knows the day will be long and hot and he is almost there and he blinks and the light turns yellow.
He's almost there.
• • •
And in that eyeblink heartbeat pause between the clicks of my turn signal a car – three, four cars ahead in the right lane – cuts left, without a signal. And the Chevy, in front of me, sees him pull out and stands on his brakes and stops just short of where the car is pulling out and
I am behind him and I am accelerating and then suddenly he is stopped and my eyes fly wide and I stomp on the brake and he is close so very close and all I can see is the chrome of his bumper and it seems so big and I am waiting for the brakes to stop me and the seatbelt to seize me across the chest and shoulder and
this is not what I'd intended.
• • •
The light shifts red half a heartbeat before he leaves the curb but he is flying, he is flying, and even as he soars out he registers that the light has changed and he sees the westbound traffic starting to pull forward and before he can even reach the median he knows: he cannot make it
and he sees traffic moving quickly down the hill, in the passing lane, windshields brilliant with reflected sunlight and
there is no time
and he swings himself, the bike, back around – an abrupt U-turn – and prepares to cut back across the right lane to the safety of the curb and
there is a truck.
• • •
The sound is incredible, metal on metal and terrible and humiliating and this can't be happening and then I
I can't see the bumper beyond this explosion of smoke and motion and my field of vision swarms with something pale and the sensation of tremendous heat and I'm standing on the brake but I'm being propelled backward and there is smoke
why is there so much smoke I just
I just wanted to get my girls.
• • •
A truck, a flatbed, that had waited for him to pass and then started accelerating forward when he suddenly turned back around and there was no time no warning no chance to do anything but try to swerve right but
there was no space.
There was no time.
• • •
Smoke and powder and heat and sound and I am confused, so very confused, not because I don't know what's just happened but because I can't believe it, I just can't believe it, because this can't be right but
I just, I don't, I don't
and the smoke and the powder begins to clear out the side windows and jesus it's
it's my airbag. My fucking airbag deployed.
And I look out my windshield and my windshield is intact but beyond the glass there is a terrible new landscape of crumpled metal and
my heart is beating at a thousand beats per minute
oh, god, I hope the guy in front of me is okay
and the airbag deflates, a sad and pale balloon, and the air is thick with the stench of smoke and I'm okay, I think I'm okay, I'm not
my hand is sore, like it can still feel the heat of something exploding (I will discover soon: there is a burn across the heel of my hand and along the base of my fingernails. Even the sleeve of my shirt has melted, slightly. Sudden, violent friction is an incredible thing.) and my heart feels like it's going to burst out of my chest and my
my girls, I'm supposed to pick up my girls and
the car that had pulled in front of the Chevy accelerates and smoothly pulls away, and the light turns red and for a moment, we – me, the Chevy, the other cars around us – all of us, sit stunned and quiet. Absorbing what just happened. What might have happened.
• • •
15. He was 15 years old on that morning, that early July. His name was Adam.
He will always be 15 years old.
• • •
My weak heart leapt — a bird, winnowed by hunger, discovering the cage door suddenly open: confused, overwhelmed, excited beyond its capacity for joy. I felt it shudder within me, and then fly free.
In those seconds, as they stretched long and my field of vision shimmered and bloomed rich with warm colors they'd never beheld before, I stopped myself mid-breath. Pausing, tasting the weight of the air on my tongue, sensing the slow and careless pulse of blood across my skin, willing the moment to stasis. Knowing even in the moment that I could not succeed, that my will would fail me and that – in pulling a great draft of new and sweeter airs deep into these folded chambers in my chest – the press of time would press beyond me, pulling away this now, this forever instant, this first blush of wonderstruck awe as you brushed that thin wave of dark hair from your face and your eyes flashed up and open and the entire room filled with light.
You were angry. I felt an intruder, a fascinated witness: that such rare beauty might be seized in such fine outrage. Your cheeks flushed bright in warning, a bouquet of ripe strawberries spilling across the snow, and even from a distance I imagined the heat radiating down the slope of your cheekbones like an avalanche of tender-scented molecules thrown into sudden frenzy, crazed and alive with the kinetics of you.
I envied them.
You spoke aloud a woman's name, and your eyes scanned the room as if seeking a target — as if some great switch had thrown into a brilliance a pair of incandescent kliegs of the softest blues, the subtlest greens, the sweet hazy grays of wind-shifted mist in those last seconds before sunrise, before dissipation, before vanishing, lost and gone forever 'neath the flood of visible light. Walls softened and warped under your gaze. Shadows fled. Motes of dust combusted in spontaneous ecstasy. Other visitors (there were others) shifted uncomfortably, as though trying to escape judgment. And for that fraction of a second that I felt them sweep over me – immobile, immaterial, a shade of a man draped over furniture – something shifted and swelled within me, pressing against my cage of ribs, suddenly desperate for escape and for the chance (the sliver, the dream, the hint of what might have been a wish) to recapture that glow, that first moment I saw the moon fill the sky.
And the name. Not the name you spoke, but the voice that gave it shape, form and function. The crisp, clipped syllables that tumbled from the cool, pomegranate crescents of your lips like lemmings seeking the sea. The something slight and throaty and low buried in the intonation — the suggestion of a laugh buried within the anger, a riddle wrapped in an enigma hidden in a cadence that would, could, should sculpt stanzas and sonnets and stories. Or inspire them.
And my skin tingled and rose from my bones, as though in the presence of strong magnets or electricity — subject to forces of strange nature that would defy the solemn weight of substance and lift me, in whole or in part, toward the near shores of heaven. I felt a stranger from the familiar trappings of flesh, and suddenly realized: This is the shock of recognition. This is what I was meant for. And the tumblers clicked into place and the lock tumbled free and I looked up, my lips drawing wide into an unfamiliar smile, and watched the gate swing wide and all I could think was: such a beautiful day.
It was such a beautiful day.
We watched you, standing there at the edge of the room, long and regal and commanding – the fabric of light wrapping around you, bending to your will, pulsing in and out in time with each bright and radiant throb of your pulse – and as you drew a deep breath we heard a sound like water ceasing to flow. And we waited, enraptured, incapable of any action but reaction, four triggers trembling in anticipation of your next razored glance, your next sharp word, your next subtle exertion of pressure and influence that might set us into motion and spinning into wild and unanticipated tangents at velocities just shy of the speed of sound. It felt terrifying, and exhilarating, pregnant with the weight of a new life eager to take form and grow large, then larger than any life we'd known before. That I'd known before, at least.
(I could only presume I was not alone in this, in knowing myself a tumbling, jagged blade of stone suddenly captured in orbit and bound unexpectedly within the tender confines of gravity. I could not have been the only one to feel this way.)
And your lips parted, and I saw the ghost of your tongue rest – only for the briefest instant – along a glacial ridgeline of teeth, as if preparing to speak some great and unknowable secret bound in the sinewy vines of L's: love and life, loss and Leviathans, lessons and lessenings and limbos we feared to leave behind.
In my chest, folded wings quivered, almost imperceptibly. Stirring with the promise of warmth, and oxygen.
And then the entire world shifted on its axis, and your eyes met mine. Unbidden, without thought, within the space of that single heartbeat, the cage fell behind.
Leaping, not looking. Lighter than air. Lifted, as if by joy.
This is beginning, is what I felt.
And your eyes stayed with mine, finding something unknown but knowable.
This is beginning.
And then you turned away. Turned, and walked away.
I watched, the space where you had been. In the periphery of my vision, I saw the door. It was open. I did not follow.
This is what I remember.
I almost spoke your name.
• • •
This post originally appeared on Polite Fictions as part of a series entitled "The Alphabet of Regret."
And in that instant
I am aloft in a way I've never known before, a growing cushion of air rising to fill the space between my skin and my seat, the wheels and the road, my head snapping back with effortless, eyeblink ferocity and colliding with the headrest (the crush of my hair against leather, pressing through the foam to touch the steel within) then a whipcrack snap forward, vertebrae compressing and releasing like pistons firing at neural speed, the engine still running strong and loud and my heart surging with adrenaline and
in the periphery of my vision I can see the earth spin and turn, as if the axis of the world has shifted
I think: how odd
and the sound, the sound, it's incredible, that terrible squeal and crush of metal bending and tearing, iron wrenching from iron and glass and the compression of air in my lungs and those seconds – one, and two, and the long heartbeat stretch to three – when it all dissolves to echo and gravity fades to myth and I become aware that I am still pressing down on the accelerator, as though I might catch up to this impossibly swift rotation of earth and sky and in matching its speed slow its pace and return to the world I'd known and all I hear is the engine the wheels freed from the restraints of physics straining to catch hold on this cool evening air and
then a corner connects – I cannot tell which one, and in not understanding I lose some illusion of control – and there is a new eruption of torque and velocity, of moving so many different ways at once, and I am the tail of a kite arcing and spiraling in a strong wind, diving and soaring and fighting against myself and this thin brace of fabric that cuts deep across my waist and the forgiving skin where neck and shoulder meet
where you had rested your head, seeking solace and comfort and this
is all
it's all happening so fast
and the adrenaline fills me with strength and fury and my arms and chest swell — with will, with purpose, with terror and defiance and
something catches
and I feel my leg twist and churn beneath me, the thick muscle of my thigh stretching and turning upon itself and in a flash I think of the nest of tendons and ligaments like ivy wrapping 'round a trunk of bone (I imagine it wood, bending but unbowed) and then something breaks free and I feel it rise through my chest that insane rush of pain desperately escaping my body and
the windshield
the glass dissolves into shooting stars
and it is beautiful and I am screaming and
…
• • •
This post was originally published at PoliteFictions as part of a series built around the theme "What happens after…?"
Her fingers arc out, stretching. Trying to span the distance between who she's been and who she's becoming. To hold it within her hands, to feel the weight of this new world and know she will be able to bear it as her own. She closes her eyes, feeling the brush of cotton against her fingertips, imagining it skin on skin…
A tiny shudder. We both feel it. Excitement and revulsion. The ecstasy to come.
A ghost of a smile flutters across her lips – an unspoken promise, the tiny half-crescents that carve her cheeks translating the primal elements of language into the gentle, rhythmic pulses of galvanic response – and her shoulders press back, deep, against the welcoming slope of the bench. She works through the groups, one by one: neck, shoulders, upper and lower back. Abdomen. Quads and hamstrings, long and limber, tapering into calves that seize and clench, tight and strong, then flow loose — muscle memory vivid with years of long runs, how the miles slipped away with the steady course of blood and breath, impact and release. And her fingers, arcing, farther and ever farther, feeling their way across this undiscovered country, tracing the anatomy of hope and desire blindly, carefully, protectively.
It is an intimate braille; a mother tongue coded in protein chains and the silent barter of oxygen. A syntax of pheremones, there to be heard and understood by any who might listen. Who might learn it as their own, capturing nuances and inflections. Studying. Absorbing. Preparing for that moment of recognition: a native speaker?
A tiny shudder. I wonder if we both feel it. The anticipation of something wonderful drawing near.
She luxuriates in this thin shard of sunlight, the oblique angles of late October belying the warmth of a summer that lingers, reluctant to let go. She closes her eyes as her lungs fill, air tasting of pinesap and distant woodsmoke. Breasts swelling taut beneath thin white cotton. Saturating with warmth, and the knowledge of loving and being loved. Her fingers, stretching, arcing along with the lunar curve. And then she smiles – no ghost, this – and whispers, "A harvest moon" and the sugar maples tremble their leaves, a fluttering of wings in the warm autumn breeze, and the sky is a tumbling riot of reds and golds and in that moment ripeness is all and she cannot help but laugh and her voice
rises
twisting along the dry edges of falling leaves, leaping upward from one to the next, spiraling and spinning and soaring, joy lighter than air, and
I shudder, chilled by the breeze and this deep shadow, secreted beyond the sun's reach. But I do not make a sound. I never make a sound.
A crow settles in a nearby tree, and cries once. It listens, carefully, for a reponse, and she honors it by doing the same. It is quiet, save the rustling of brittle leaves.
We wait. For now, we wait.
• • •
This post was originally published on PoliteFictions, as part of a series called "Heaven or Las Vegas: Seven Sins and Seven Virtues."
A fiction, of sorts.
• • •
The blade is serrated, teeth thickened and ragged with rust. As though by virtue of this ferrous grin – a soft riot of October pretense – it might camouflage the sudden and terrible hunger hiding beneath. My eyes, my lungs, both thick with sleep, struggle to shrug off what must be the lingering stuff of nightmare: hacksaws and hunger, deeper than bone, creasing through me with steady, deliberate ease, pulsing more strong and sure with each gentle arterial pulse, across the infinite expanse of muscle and sinew, twisting through the elegant maze of capillary to the waiting cushion of flesh.
I will awaken, I think. Just enough to brush it away. And then, with infinite care, return to the welcome comforts of sleep and kinder dreams.
But as I exhale, the pain grows bright and real, and without thinking my left hand reaches across my body to cup the right. To soothe by its presence. To pluck the thorn from its brother paw.
What it finds is unfamiliar.
A terrain unlike itself: skin stretched massive and tight and tender, throbbing with tangible heat, angry at the suggestion of contact. Involuntarily a groan escapes, warm air brushing against dry lips, and as I sit upright I have to bite back the burst of sensation that erupts like a geyser, coursing up the length of my arm like a flood of adrenalinized fire ants, soaring over the low ridges of my shoulders and neck and directly into the echoing cathedral of skull. It is an explosion of white light gone red at the edges, and for a second it is all sound and fury and I wonder if I might lose consiousness.
Searing. I have been set aflame.
I do all I can do: draw air into my lungs, concentrate on respirating, on counting down the moments until the conflagration recedes enough that my field of vision fills with something more than synaptic misfires perceived as infinite waves of angry color — an aurora borealis these eyes have never seen before. Willing myself through it. To slow my breathing, my perceptions, to a recognizable speed of life. I tally each breath as it passes, calming my body with the familiar structure of numbers, one following the next following the next, steady and logical and orderly. This is how the world works. Logic and order. I wait for it to take hold, and make sense of this dream.
The clock calmly marks the passage of time as 2:18 slides effortlessly into 2:19, thin characters rearranging with practised ease. They know where to go, and how to move. I follow suit, and slide my legs out of bed and onto the floor as quietly as I'm able. Trying not to awaken my wife. It is surprising (although, perhaps, not so surprising) when I stand and once again find the world swimming in unwelcome light and motion. I steady myself, my left hand instinctively reaching out to the bookshelf to hold me in place, and wait for the moment to pass. It seems to happen more quickly, this time. Then I carefully make my way around the circumference of the bed, moving my feet softly, trying not to hit the loose boards beneath the rug – a pattern familiar as the back of my hand – and awaken anyone else with this… whatever this is. The door lies beyond, and I step through it and down the hall and into the bathroom. I close the door, quietly as I can. Then I reach up and brush the light switch with my hand and
I see my hand, my other hand,
and I do not recognize it
a pale balloon, bloated with rot and sudden anguish, the fist of a golem rising from the familiar countours of my forearm and hanging, half-hanging, half-asway, from the mottled horn of my swollen thumb is the band-aid I'd placed there earlier in the evening. My skin, dry from the wind and relentless cold of these long winter months, had cracked like old stone near the base of my knuckle during the day — a small cut, but the irritation grew and I'd dressed and bandaged it before going to bed, entrusting the simple miracles of biology to heal me as I'd always been healed.
The bandage hangs from one end, now elongated and thinned, having stretched beyond its capabilities through the course of the night as this had…
happened? What happened? What's happening?
I stare at it, for a minute and then two, trying to make sense of what I see. And then I accept my failure, and step back into the hallway. Six steps ahead, my wife lies sleeping beneath thick blankets of flannel and darkness. I hope I will not be interrupting a wonderful dream.
• • •
The noise is tremendous. Not the siren – it's still the middle of the night, and they are not using the siren – but the steady, deafening rumble of broad tires spinning at furious speeds over blacktop. The equipment, all that equipment, straining against the slender bonds that hold them in place. My wife, saying things she thinks will be comforting, or distracting.
The gurney, and the straps holding me in my place. Straining against forces I don't understand. Centrifugal. Inertial. Bacterial.
I cannot see a horizon where I lie. I need someplace to fix my gaze, and so I stare resolutely at the IV bag as it pours a clear solution of antibiotics through the thin nylon tube and into my arm. I wonder if it tastes sweet. The liquid. Like sugar water.
I do not focus on the monitors to which I'm attached. Heart rate. Blood pressure. God knows what else. IQ, if I'm unlucky. I almost smile, thinking that, and for an instant think of looking over to my wife to share it with her when it comes again: the clenching — a wave of intense pain and nausea and terror that overwhelms my capacity for rational thought or containment, and before I can even shift my eyes I feel myself seized in the grasp of whatever has taken my body I cannot control my body it feels like it's not even mine anymore and I wish desperately that I could pass out from the pain, to let it happen to someone else, to be someone else but I am here and I am trapped and it has me and it is not letting go and my wife rubs my shoulder because it is all she can do and says, "It's going to be okay, it's going to be okay" and the EMT sitting beside her says something and adjusts the drip and calls forward to the driver and I hear the driver talking to the hospital
the second hospital; the first was not equipped, and they are sending me to the city, and they will take care of me and
"His arm," my wife says, "the red streaks are getting darker. They're getting longer" and I want to pretend it's someone else combusting from the inside, whose pale and freckled skin is betraying a scarlet network of infection taking root and spreading toward the core and it was just a cut, a tiny cut and I wonder which will come first: the ambulance threading its way through the streets to Beth Israel or the spreading darkness in my arm, threading its way to my shoulder and chest and fragile heart and my god, my god, it just won't let go and the EMT says "His blood pressure's dropping" and it fucking hurts so much and I wish
• • •
The world is moving. Fading. In and out of focus, like the lens on a camera trying to find the distance where color assumes shape, function, definition. I feel myself lifted, and the sensation of motion. The flickering of flourescents as they flutter against my eyelids, weightless but for the brush of particulate light.
My hand, my arm, consumed in flame.
I have felt this way forever.
• • •
The world is shifting. Light and sound, one blurring into the other. The syncopated mechanical rhythms of clicks and beeps and the soft whirr of cooling fans. Distant voices, calling nurses or doctors to one room or the next. Or to mine. Someone must be taking care of me. I breathe deeply, try to draw myself into awareness, and feel the web of leads and lines that weave in and through and out from me in radiant patterns – graceful, I imagine them, an abtuse geometry of angles – to a rim of careful anchors. I open my eyes, slightly, and lift my right arm. For a moment, I wonder if the motion will summon a spider.
I look down at the golem's hand. Thick and discolored. A massive black-blue blister at what was once a knuckle.
It is a tool robbed of subtlety.
I am glad no one is there to watch me break.
• • •
"…suppressed." It is my wife's voice. I recognize her voice.
"Yes. By the steroids he was taking to reduce the swelling around his pinched nerve." Another voice. Guessing: doctor. "So with his immune system suppressed, the infection – which he probably acquired when he was in the hospital for…"
Fuck me. The abdominal surgery I'd had three weeks ago, which was supposed to have been endoscopic but they ended up having to use the knife and I ended up staying for four days, coming out unable to sneeze and with a pinched nerve in my hip and I don't… this doesn't make any sense.
I try to speak. Fail. It sounds a low groan.
My throat is filled with sand.
"Strep-A," says the doctor. "Which is giving way to…"
And then he says it, and even though I cannot speak and cannot stand and can barely open my eyes or follow the conversation I hear it, and I know what it is, and I almost have to laugh because this is the stuff of black humor and dark jokes about terrible things that happen to people who are not real and not the people I know the people I love and not, no, fuck no not me and my wife is saying something to him and then to me and she is leaning over and kissing me and I think she might be crying because I think I feel the moisture on my cheek, my skin foreign and arid and desperate for the warmth and promise of water and salt and sweet release and the world starts to shift and again I feel the light flickering as we move from room to hall to room and the right half of my body screams ferocious and alive with terrible, hungry flame and they are explaining to me what will happen and I'm not me and this isn't happening and I'm ready to wake up now and I hear those words, those words – necrotizing faciitis – that dark joke and this isn't
and the mask comes down over my mouth and nose, and it is soft and cool and the smell is antiseptic and somewhere above me someone is counting backwards from 10 to 9 and 8 and
• • •
For Chris