by Michael Battaglia
I'll remember the taste of this day, the sour residue
of something being severed combined with the sweet pretext
of promise, that a grand plan was about to be enacted. It
lingers still, even in those moments when I think it's gone.
There's flavors to your life, to everything and when the
senses are attuned you don't need a calendar. You don't
even need a watch. There's no stages to my life, but I know
each phase. I know what loss can taste like, in a thousand
different permutations. But that doesn't make me special.
I just know how to put a name to it, even if I can't find
the letters to make it real. I want you to know, that I
grasped for something that just wasn't there. That doesn't
make it wrong, or the failure any less right.
I've got shame sewn into my mouth. One day I'll tell you
about it perhaps, when you can't remember and I need to
get rid of the memory and pass it on.
I descend and see the sidewalk first. There's no direction
anymore but I know everything about this, from the slant
of the stunted shadows to the way the air sizzles in a search
for some kind of release. I could be trapped in my own memory,
so vivid is the day. But I'm not. I'm here in time and the
angles are all wrong. I've fallen and I've landed on the
ceiling. On my back. Oh, there's my stairs. My house. The
windows are all dark now, the curtains wide open but there's
no light inside. It's all gone. All personality is stripped
from it, if anyone ever lived here the only way you could
know would be from rumor and anecdote, the faulty recollections
who would be hard pressed to tell you what my hair color
was, two hours after they last saw me. But I don't blame
them. They don't realize how sharp it is, to let the memories
go. We've become numb and all the cuts will bleed us dry
and we just won't care. Holding on is worse, if you don't
handle them gently then all you've got is pain. But what
choice is there, in the end? I don't know. I'm on my knees,
in this ghostplace. My body, I'm just so tired. It's not
even here and I'm just so sick of it.
I'm in front of my house. I'm watching myself in front
of my house. I'm pacing there, I think I was standing on
the front steps and watching the door. I was, I remember.
I came out then and stood in front of the place for a while,
trying to memorize every detail, knowing that it wouldn't
be the same the next time I saw it. They painted it, the
bastards, in some goddamn awful ugly color. I never would
have done that, had I stayed. But I didn't and it was theirs
to mess up as they wished. When do the houses change, you
go a hundred years back and it's all different, more trees
and empty spaces and a road made of dirt and who changes
it, when nobody's looking. Not just in one night but that's
how it seems. It's not.
I'm walking, I haven't stopped walking. When sharks stop
moving they die and I'm afraid that the beating of my heart
is defined by motion, that my parents just sat down one
day and said this is it, I'm tired, I'm going to sit right
here and rest for a minute. And they stopped and they never
got up again. And I wanted to wait with them but they said,
go on boy, we'll catch up. It never happens. And I couldn't
go back. And I'm walking around the remains of my life and
there's just me. I've surgically removed everything, I've
spent the week excising it all, slicing it away until I'm
only left with the meat and the bone. Everything else is
fat, it all has to be left behind, to rot in the sun.
Down the road, somewhere far from me, maybe across the
street I hear a voice call out, "Wait." I don't
hear it. I didn't hear it then, honestly. I hear it now
and it makes sense. But I don't notice and I'm walking away,
I'm going around to the side of my house now. My room was
in the front, I'm staring at the window and it's just all
dark now. I turned off the lights, I disconnected everything.
All the tubes removed, I've withdrawn the life support.
I didn't tell anyone, because I thought it was best for
all of you to think it was natural. That it was meant to
be this way. Let the body wither and fade and if you do
it slowly enough nobody will miss it. Death is the sudden
cessation, even if it takes eighty years, it's the abrupt
stop that slays us, that punches us in the gut every time.
I wanted to drift out to sea, the absurd balloon that you
see floating away, standing on the shore, with mist stinging
my eyes, watching the damn thing float out and I was just
waving at it, waving and waving as it went further out.
It was red and I watched it until the air or the mists or
the horizon swallowed it up, until my eyes were too weak
to see it anymore. Until one moment it was there, impossibly
small and the next minute it was gone. I want to be like
that, when I go. You'll just think I went somewhere else
and that I'm still travelling, wherever I am, in places
that your eyes won't be able to fathom, you'll think of
me in zones that are just around the corner and too far
away to touch and be content with that.
I'm going around to the back of my house. "Wait,"
they're telling me but I don't stop. I can't stop. I'm following
myself, tracing out the last steps. Going around. The garage,
squat and secure. The railings on top of the flat roof,
the door from my parents' room that I was never allowed
to use. I never did go through, I was afraid. But they were
gone and couldn't stop me but I didn't think it was right.
They said it wasn't safe. I didn't go up. The view was too
broad, all the houses at the wrong angle. Too high up. And
I might have thrown myself off, just to see how it felt
to hit something unyielding.
"Wait," it says.
Along the side paths, I'm going into my backyard. It opens
like a vista before me, and I know how they felt, the old
pioneers topping the rise, seeing the land before them for
the first time and realizing they were entering virgin landscape,
never touched by eyes. I walk into it and sunlight envelopes
me, escaping from the shadow of the house, I'm drenched
in it. There used to be so many trees back here, it was
like entering a forest, all dappled shadows and if you turned
around and ignored the house and forgot about the fences
I could imagine I was taken somewhere before man. Before
man and after man. Walking for miles and miles in endless
wilderness, never seeing a single person. Everything pristine.
It scared me, in a way, to think that things were so empty
and spaced out. My father cut the trees down, one by one
and the backyard opened up and it was never the same. It
became a different place. We took down three at once and
made a wood pile in a corner of the yard, near the house.
I used to walk on it, just to feel the logs shift. They
told me not to and I did anyway. I don't know what was wrong
with me. I'm putting it all to rest, turning out the lights
on every memory I ever had. I'm walking out deep into the
yard, over grass I haven't cut yet, that I'll never get
to. "Wait," it says, it tells me. Somewhere behind.
I remember a flood, when it rained, and how the place turned
into a lake. Light shimmering off dank waters, watching
it recede every day, a different kind of dying, going back
in layers. Antediluvian, nuggets lodged in the mind, touching
centers you can't explain.
"Wait," someone says. And I can't. I remember
too much, you know. I can be accused of that. I remember
this, I can tell you this. Are you listening? Because I'm
not. They say it and they'll say it again. I'm looking at
myself and I know I haven't slept since the night before.
I went for a walk around my town, that last night. I wanted
to erase everything, fold it up and box it away. I traced
all the paths I could name, following a rigid line, going
all the ways that I was taught and remembering mornings
strung like dewdrops. Going by houses and trying to recall
who lived there. It stops you, walking on shrouded ways,
on the sidewalks that had seen winter and spring and autumn
and summer with me. Walking through snow covered desolation
and hearing nothing, not a car or a person or a siren or
anything that might suggest anyone was alive but me. I walked
past the house of the first girl I ever had a crush on.
It wasn't you. Are you surprised? No, I didn't think so.
You know who she was, I told you, in those quiet moments
when we pretended we didn't tell each other anything. I
don't know what happened to her, I never said anything,
the one time I ever disobeyed my own rule. Never hide your
own feelings. It's a broken road. All through the years
I carried it and I never said, because it was the first,
because holding inside meant it was in a vacuum, it was
sealed and sterile and unchanged. Speaking it outloud would
release it and make it real and when anything touches the
air it degrades, it fades and rusts and eventually falls
apart. I couldn't let that happen. So I never said. So I
stood in front of her house and wondered if she ever picked
up on it, in those subtle cues that girls always notice.
But sometimes when you think you've obvious you really aren't.
I'm standing in my backyard and I've knelt down, staring
at the ground. There's marks in the soil, holes. We put
them there, we scarred the land ourselves. I used to have
a swingset, my father jammed it into the dirt and I used
to swing on it like a madman, trying to push it higher and
higher. The supports used to come out of the ground, the
whole thing used to rock crazily until I thought it might
just tip over. My mother did the intelligent thing and stopped
me, she ran out of the house and made me come inside. I
told you that, I'm sure. We laughed about it, how goddamn
stupid I was. I loved your laugh, I want you to know. "Wait,"
you would have said, because you couldn't hear me, because
you were trying to catch your breath. "Hold on, wait."
It was a girl's laugh but it was high and soft and never
sounded less than sincere. But I was saying. The girl, the
girl, I was saying. I wonder what happened to her, sometimes.
I stood in front of her house, across the street and wondered
if she still lived there. If her parents had moved away
and taken all reason for her to stay with them. It certainly
wasn't me. I was never an anchor, I never meant to be. The
balloon in the morning, while the waves flattened the sand,
gritty oatmeal. Don't go away. There's holes now, and that's
all that's left of us, the only sign that we were ever here.
I have to know how the story ends, that's my problem, I
can't let the tale dangle. People say, who cares, it isn't
your life but that's the point. Don't you see? That's the
only reason. I know the story of my life, there's no mystery
in it, I've got the direction. "Wait." But no,
stop, listen, please, listen. If I had stayed, would I have
said? How does it end? I know how you end and I'm the lesser
and the greater for it. Because it's been tied up. You're
gone and I don't have to wonder anymore. I'm sorry. Dammit.
I'm sorry. I want to know, what would I have done. I bet
I would have only seen her twice in the days I had, the
first time we would have talked and I never would have said
anything because I figured it was history and it was old
news and and I'd never see her again. And the second time
I would have seen her from a distance and never said anything
and wish I had because you never know when the last time
would be. The wind shivers in the too warm air. There were
never any kids on my block, there was a playground down
the street and I never went there because it was too close.
It was no escape. I would see her from the back, I think,
the second time and I would wonder how she had changed.
I can't stand a mystery. I think if I had stayed I would
have imagined us running into each other and finding that
there was some kind of spark there, something that I never
saw before, that the years had only deepened. And her curiousity
would draw her to me and I would find the nerve, finally.
I'll find out she's getting married, down the line, in some
year, after a dream that everything is failing, and it'll
be gone then. All false hope discarded. You always think,
until you have no other choice. I never told you any of
this. You would have hit me and told me to stop being stupid
and either tell her or forget about it and get on with it.
It was a branch never taken and you wonder what if only
because we have no other choice. You didn't see time like
I did, all the linear ways, wound around each other like
flower stems, one crossing into another, what we do affects
people we never see. Maybe she'll marry him because he reminds
her of me, in ways that she can't explain. Oh, ego. Dear
God. It'll ruin me yet, to not say anything. The grass is
too high here, in this year. It's soft and too high. And
I don't care. And it's not my problem anymore. I'll raise
a glass on their wedding day, I'll toast the man for having
the balls to do what I could never do. If I was around.
If these things are true. But who can say? It's not my problem.
It never was.
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