My first week living in this swamp I had a hard time admitting I was what I was. The growth formula, the fire, all the violence and loss—these things caused me to be the thing I am, and what was left of the scientist in me made me want to find an antidote of some kind to fix the problem I had become.
I’m in a sweaty, swaying Dodge Caravan coasting down I-10, squished between Jill and Jacob in the backseat, their elbows jabbed sharp into my gut. My father’s hot dog fingers reach across the middle console, tight around my mother’s cookie dough roll thin thigh.
Somewhere a young wife is taking a photograph of the full moon through her husband’s telescope. Somewhere across the border, that husband is struggling to purchase ecstasy, his English-to-French dictionary wrinkling in his grasp.
We had pasta for lunch. Linguini with lemon and curls of courgette. I made it because it was your favorite and I picked a bunch of rust-red chrysanthemums from my garden and placed them on the table.
If you want to bring a crow to your yard, get rid of anything that could scare them. Throw out your bells and windchimes and fix the squeaky hinges on the front gate. Get rid of reflective surfaces–they don’t like to look at themselves.
When you’re gone, I practice for when you’re dead. You might be gone to the store, or taking out the trash or having a bath and I’ll pretend not to hear the car or back door or water draining the tank.
After every show, when the crowds shuffle home with the stage lights still winking in their eyes and buttery popcorn kernels refusing to digest in their stomachs, you crawl into your trailer, the one where the freaks sleep.
Belmont station and it’s 2 a.m. and the father’s stranded out here somewhere in who the hell knows on his way back home, when it should have been a straight shot but has somehow taken him a good two hours to just end up getting lost like the sad-eyed dogs you’ll see tied up side of the highway sometimes and plus he’s starving, so bad it feels like pennies in his guts.
Though it is ill-advised, she looks back. How can she not? She looks back and sees the place of her life and her inside of it. Her and her brother rescuing the worms after rain. Moon shining in her dark wet hair, head leaning out the window, smelling the rosemary, smiling, saying goodnight.
And now you should say goodbye to the ones you love. Loop a pair of clouded binoculars around your neck. Pack a peanut butter sandwich and a rusty apple and a bottomless bottle of water.