Troubles, Bubbles

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. The rain in the foothills falls, soaking the ground, soaking the cardboard boxes that blew off the porch, soaking. . . .

The claw-foot tub is deep, long. I painted the outside with black enamel, covering the years of red, blue, purple, yellow, chips, scrapes, episodes. The shiny black shell comforts me while I soak. The bubbles. . . . tear drops. . . . tea pot. . . . salts.

Rain, tears, tea--the basic elements. They seep into my pores, take away the pain. A big fish, a great whale is waiting for these troubles, enough to sustain him. Yes, they will keep him floating a long, long, time.

Soaking.

At Some Point

At some point, you simply become weary of grieving. It is boring.

You are open to new experiences: throwing rocks, throwing plates, throwing fast, throwing out, throwing up. Something must break, something must give, something must go. It must be this gluttonous grief--all consuming, all knowing, all in.

It has to go.

The Heart of Nothing

The universe equals zero. Nothing. I heard so on NPR.

If you pull up the four corners of the universe like a quilt, it equals zero. Zero. Nothing.

It makes sense.

Trivial. Of little consequence. No thing. Not anything. Nonexistent.

A thing that does not exist.

Like a wife or a lover.

Once the universe, but pulled up like a quilt, she is nothing.

So what becomes of the Nile and Niagara Falls? Where does the rain forest go? What of Mount McKinley? London? Are the red, double-decker buses still running? Is the hungover saxophonist still wailing on Bourbon Street? Are the pilgrims buying carved cedar souvenirs in Bethlehem?

The heart of nothing is everything-all that is, all that was, all that will be.

Absolute zero-- throbbing, whole, full.

Routine

This is our routine:

I fall asleep on the love seat watching TV. The chocolate-point Siamese curls up to sleep on top of my legs. He is heavy and I am reluctant to make him move when I wake up a couple of hours later to get into bed.

It is a four-poster bed with heavy cover. It is not the crocheted bedspread Granny made, but it is the same, from an estate sale years ago. Thick twine, once white, now aged, torn in a couple of places, a small stain, a small accident, a mistake made decades ago. The cotton weight is comforting. The cat follows, jumps to the cedar chest and up onto the bed. Sometime in the night, he prowls. Sometimes I hear him crying or conversations he has with the aloof black female, Athena.

In time past he would jump to the bed and look in our faces. He would find my husband and curl on top of him.  The cat always chose him.

The pink dawn barely seeps through the sheer curtains. The cat always rises first, makes his rounds, and returns to bed. He walks up to my face and I raise the cover so that he can snuggle next to me. He purrs, against my body, grateful for the warmth.

Even if it is just me.

like goo

We loved like goo...sticky, messy, sweetly oozing into the empty places. We looked with googley eyes upon one another. We slobbered like happy Pavlovian dogs at the sight of one another. We danced--my head nestled into his neck, his arm pulling me tightly to him, our rhythms . . . .

I wish I could look into his eyes, look long enough, deep enough, to see if I am in there somewhere, to find him, the messy man who loved me. I would find the poison and I would find the antidote. I would rewrite the script.

One-two

One-two, buckle my shoe, three-four, shut the door. . . . Open the gates, lock the gates, sunrise, sunset.

Who is locked in, who is locked out, what is locked away? Do the spirits slip effortlessly between the posts, whispering past the chains and padlocks? Perhaps they are grateful for the quiet, the stopping of traffic and no trampling upon the ground. Perhaps the locking of the gates allows them to roam freely, safely, unobserved.

Midnight Rider

This is not the life I thought I would be living.

We are on the phone and my friend's voice squeezes through the wires, bounces off the cell towers. Her words hit me from all directions.

Nor, I, dear friend, nor I.

Her husband dead, suddenly, accidentally. She does not doubt his devotion. He is present in every cell, every corner, yet he is missing, missing from the kitchen doorway, the ride to work, his side of the bed, the other side of the argument.

My husband . . .  I do not know what to say. My husband is forbidden to speak to me, to touch me. It is for the best, but was not always so.

Sometimes grief comes from nowhere, that vast nothingness. It appears as a cowboy hat or an Allman Brothers song:

Well, I've got to run to keep from hidin'
And I'm bound to keep on ridin'
And I've got one more silver dollar

And I don't own the clothes I'm wearing
And the road goes on forever
And I've got one more silver dollar

And I've gone by the point of caring
Some old bed I'll soon be sharing
And I've got one more silver dollar
But I'm not gonna let 'em catch me, no. . . .

(copyright Gregg Allman and Robert K. Payne)

I hear him in the high notes and I quiver. The longing I thought was gone ... is not. It courses through me like quicksilver and I wonder (as does my friend), where is that man who awakened every passion? Does he no longer exist? What form has he taken? Of this earth or not, what does it matter? All is changed. In an instant, all is . . . I don't know is all.

Midnight. Longing is like quicksilver, toxic and pulsing through my veins. I  play the song again and again.