she might go

different sadness from all the others when she is in pain. would never say this to her because she tries to absorb all of the evil in the world for me. and effectively has. different sadness in that i am feeling regular sadness, regular dark hot sadness, and then a bear rages through it, a female black bear that is so proud of me, rips open from inside of it, like a black bubble, different sadness now, deeper, no control, violent sadness.

paul came through right when it started. and i didn’t want to be made to feel better. i just kept saying to him please go away, go away, please let me have this.

let’s get really quiet now. let’s go low to the ground so our ears are touching the soil. you just breathe there and i promise i won’t tell you anything stupid. i won’t say anything stupid and i won’t tell a single lie. in the end all the lies are only to protect. and by stupid i mean i won’t make this into a show. took me forever to find a way to lay this down. and it’s going to happen to you too. i guess some people do die under a lucky star. they just close their eyes one night and don’t wake up in the morning. but even with the best money and science, it is usually brutal and ugly.

she passed a certain threshold and it felt as though a coin had fallen from the fortieth floor and landed on my sternum. but also like it had been pressing there all along. because how had i not noticed sooner. that she wasn’t getting better.

there was a day around then where my keys fell from my hand and clattered onto the sidewalk and i just stood staring at them for awhile until i walked away. and at some point it started raining, and the heat was loud in my ears like i was under a wave.

when another girl, my age but seeming so much younger, learned a similar piece of news, i was on the couch, and she burst out crying, big sobs howling and contorted. i was wearing a white dress. i tried to be polite and leave her to it. but really i was fascinated by something hard to say. that she had all of that to give it right away. and how it meant, somehow, that hers would quickly recover. and mine wouldn’t.

first her skin got all crepey. she always had the softest skin. that was something people said to her when they touched her. not that people often touched her. she was difficult to touch. but when someone brushed against her skin they’d remark upon it and she’d say yes, i know, very curtly and with her eyes cast down.

then it was the occasional call, the occasional bad spell, where a medicine would change or a procedure would require revolving caution and care. and the bad spells would compound.

she would go out every night in her nightshirt and pot around the planters. it was all mossy and shaded, but she managed to grow great big geraniums. she told me she had seen something otherworldly out there. she was hesitant to say. blacker than tar and silky like a ribbon. it had been living in the bottom of the planter. i’m telling you, because you’ll believe me, she said. when it noticed her watching it, it curled up and then slithered away.

she’s a good person, everyone keeps saying. and it’s true, that she is good, although i’m not sure what good is. she isn’t nice but she is so nice. she isn’t nice but she is kind. when she was really in the throes of it i asked her if she wanted a wheelchair, so that she could be outside, and she looked at me and said try that amelia, like it was a threat. try that and see what happens to you. when i came to her i brought her a bar of soap shaped like an alligator. she couldn’t walk but the alligator was in the soap dish by dinner.

when i wake up now the night is so black i could drop a pin in it and it would echo forever, wobble forever, and a certain feeling comes over me that something is so lodged, so stuck in me, so tightly wound that i will spend forever unraveling it. does she feel the night like this, I wonder. thats the trouble about darkness. in light i know where i am and where you begin, and we are separate. and in dark we are all one.

lord i no longer believe. it feels childish, foolish, boring, to ever consider whether you might be wanting more than you deserve. to consider any path besides being as close to each other as we possibly can. trust me we get so much less than we deserve. and then every thought moves me towards that magnet. such as when the horse guy said you don’t want to use my headphones, they’re all gross and waxy, and i said i don’t mind them, and i meant it, because we’re bodies. or when you told me that you had been depressed, and i had a feeling like how could someone like you get depressed, no, no, never you, and then i made you eat five pierogis with little green peas.

a gray sky erupting with crows. a black snake in the garden. when we checked her fever last night her voice sounded like a little girl’s. i remember we had nothing. every room was an unfinished drawing. you used to draw me all the time. i would give anything to be back there, having nothing except you.

:D

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