Year

I.

Spent the start of it swearing the scales would straighten out. Watching two sixty-year-old women play Spit. For good luck: rabbit, rabbit in the morning. It has to be the first thing you say.

A sour January, the sun splayed out. Headed south again for my last half-year in Virginia. Behind the bar I overheard a customer say, I’ve never made anything less than too much soup.

In the car, I prayed, Make me a wife, a mother. Give me somewhere to go.

II.

A sturdy February remembering how on delicate weekday evenings we’d take the back way to the city. My baby’s hand on my thigh. I think there were four of them total in two years. It comes back because I want it to. So I’m clear. Ice cream in out-of-place afternoons. Wood-paneled walls. A one-bedroom, though, after all. Two days, and I’d want them gone, except for once.

I said, If you’re too sick to eat it here, I could send it Saran-wrapped home.

III.

Would you be the godmother of? I mean of the potential of the metal Saint Jude medallion between my teeth, apartments made from old motels, doxycycline prescriptions, the laundromat change machine, how the sunlight shot in from the south and west in that kitchen in the winters, of not looking away, no matter what.

IV.

In the video he lit up a Christmas tree. I watched his face in the flit of flames. Always trying to determine if I found him handsome, which I guess meant that I did.

Let it be enough to watch the fish in the tank kiss up at the air for food. While the owner of Revelation Reptiles argues with guests’ Google reviews, asserts that he’s never sold a bum snake or any amphibian for that matter. A short curtain cut the window where I watched out at the woods, the shed, and missed every third thought. Shocked at the one-sidedness of gut punches. Pressed the raspberries to my lips like ChapStick like I did with those cherries in his car in the county while the fish steadied near the water line.

V.

A sermon. The pastor drew lines in peoples’ laughter. The laugh of

mockery | bitterness | the pure laugh of joy, of God.

God promised Sarah a son. Years passed. Sarah’s womb shriveled up. In her nineties, the Lord came to her tent. She laughed then at His promise. The laugh of bitterness, not mockery. This was an important distinction. The Lord asked, Why do you laugh? Which I thought seemed cruel.

VI.

We swam in the deep water at the base of the falls. We stretched thin towels across a flat rock. A tree with a hole clear through was a window to the water and all around was the water too. Upstream someone had set an offering. Sliced melon and banana leaves. Candles in paper cups. I couldn’t smell the rotting fruit on account of my cold.

I wanted us gone from there before time sandpapered the edges. Before the second world felt just like the first one where I’ve been waking from naps with a bad taste in my mouth, where dentist office fish sink, where we’re encouraged constantly to apply for state government jobs.

Resolute on my knees in prayer every morning until June. Until I lost again and called it.

VII.

Route eight south to Bassett. Pop country the whole way. Hung up on the last one and I’d signed a lease five hours north. Last days of Virginia. Through the high tick grass to the stream. Lyme Disease, I told him, but he wasn’t listening. On a flat rock in the water, legs out straight, knees rippling, hands and thighs, till we got cold and put back on our clothes. In the Food Lion admiring water distribution in the produce section. Cross-legged at the table while he cupped chopped vegetables into a pan.

It cooks out I swear.

I know it.

And with the rest well I don’t want to waste it.

Go ahead.

You don’t mind?

No, I don’t mind.

VIII.

I forgot how the air could sit so still in the city. Especially one built on a swamp. In Virginia the mountains wore the weather like a loose garment. In Baltimore the clouds just clumped and stuck all summer.

You wouldn’t believe it. How you can get homesick even for health code violations.

How the bottoms of my non-slip shoes slicked with tar from behind the bar. How the regulars with their red faces lined up before we unlocked the door. Lenny and Joy would be split up for the seventh time. So she was in first and out fast, stumbling downtown. And he’d come in past dark, and we swung our hips walking over to him knowing Mary would kill us if she ever saw that. The owner’s flat-out denial of the fruit fly infestation and his sexual harassment charges in the state of California. There was a mushroom growing from the wood beneath the sink off the kitchen where we brewed the sweet tea. Do you know how hard it is? the hostess said. How near impossible it is to create the conditions to grow this?

IX.

Up before the sun for breakfast shifts at a five-star hotel by the bay. Tires popped across cobblestone streets. The day cook got drunk and angry, but that kitchen was clean. Sometimes a celebrity would stay. Once, the water rose, and I felt that disorienting high amidst the threat of extreme weather.

In the evenings, sheets carpenter-clamped to the sides of the porch so his neighbors couldn’t see in. He washed my hair and wanted me to stay till morning. I prayed, Make me the cold sore capital of the long, old world. Just one thing to pass back and forth forever. He installed a water filter beneath my sink and altered my expectations of carbonated drinks. Still, it lasted only six weeks. 

X.

An annual fall bonfire. Wet wood propped up with newspaper. Looking for lighter fluid while my cousins circled with cans of beer. 

My cat took sick that next Sunday. Plates of untouched tuna piled up in the fridge. He couldn’t walk, but I carried him out to the yard on his last afternoon to sit in a square patch of sun. All eight years together came back to me. When he went it was peaceful. I wrapped him in a gold blanket, tucked his toy sloth beside him.

I drove his body back up to Pennsylvania to bury him in my mother’s yard. My dad dug the hole and placed a rose bush on top. We sprinkled powdered lime to sweeten the soil.

XI.

In November I returned to my knees in infinite resignation. Met my brother at a shrine, and we walked the prayer path up the mountain. Rhododendron leaves waxed green against the wet marble. At the largest steel statue we knelt and looked up. His birthday was two days away. I didn’t tell him what had shifted in my heart, but I crossed myself when I saw him do it.

Driving home later in an afternoon with too many square feet. I considered the life of a nun, skipping straight over romantic love, towards the true center. But then I was back to city traffic, wanting for all the world just once.

XII.

By the time I reached Bethlehem, it was snowing, and there were no names left in my mouth. Strands of Christmas lights strung across old company towns. Pulling off the highway to buy a candy bar and keychain. A year ago to the day he said, Hard telling, not knowing and I was certain I’d know at least one thing by now. Twisting off the edge of the bed, outside of time. It comes back because I want it to. So I’m clear.