Sunday, October 26, 2014

ghost is gone




One of the fish in the pond got sucked into the recirculating intake pipe and died in the filter basket with a few snails and a wad of slimy water lettuce.

I don’t remember what Simone named that one, but its body was solid shimmering white and its head was the color of an apricot - Ghost, maybe. Curiosity — “I wonder what’s in that strange round opening” — apparently kills more than cats. Poor fish, slammed around inside a plastic cage by relentless rushing water, in the dark. I wonder if it couldn’t catch its breath or starved or just said “fuck this” and gave up. Do its four friends know it’s gone? Do they miss him? Or was Ghost a her, and why does this make me sadder?

There is a kind of loneliness so profound it’s hard to describe. A unconnectedness, as if not even air quite touches my body; there is a layer of nothing, microns deep, between me and the rest of all that is the world. I don’t think about it often, only when the confidence I am famous for breaks like the shell on a boiled egg and before another layer grows. While it hardens, I am vulnerable, wide open to wounding.

This might explain why I crave touch, warm skin, the muffled thump of a beating heart. My ear, pressed against Mack’s neck just below the hinge of his jaw, finds the whoosh of blood pulsing to his face and his brain, the food for his ability to smile and blink, to reason and wonder. If I turn and place my closed eye there, his heartbeat echoes in my head, thinning the nothingness layer to almost-gone. Like warm sand on bare feet or a hairbrush against my scalp, it is the cat-arch of good feeling that I want to just keep happening until the sun implodes.


Recently I decided to finish our bedroom, a place that had, over eight years, become a warehouse for things that belonged nowhere: boxes, ugly sun-bleached curtains that didn’t fit, a sloppy bed. Lots of time, angst and dollars later, the windows are nicely draped and the pillows on the couch make me smile. But the coverlet I was sure was the key to my loving this room only makes it harder to make the bed, which explains why it spends half the days folded in half and flung over a chair. It’s a little like making that incredibly delicious cake that the majority of people at your dinner table refuse (on account of all.those.calories) which prompts you to have a huge piece (at least I will appreciate this!) despite your tight ass jeans. Are you happy now?

I want to think I would be happier if I were closer - all the time - to more people who love me, if I (or we, but Mack snorts at that thought) lived somewhere near San Francisco. See, except for my girl, her husband, and Simone, almost all of my people are scattered ashes, and we live down here among the ‘steps,’ only a few of whom are glad Mack has been married for nearly thirty years to the woman he has actually loved for all of those plus fifteen more. If all you care about is someone’s money, you tend to pfffft at real love, especially if you don't have any. That makes for awkward holiday chit-chat and is my number two reason (behind adoring those three up north) for bolting up the freeway at the drop of a hat. It also chips at my eggshell, tapping at a weak spot, aiming to hurt. I try not to care about the not-so-subtle meannesses; I am ashamed for even noticing; I scold myself to stop it.

Give me a soft jacket, an old one from half a life ago with pockets furry on the insides, and a red scarf. In the cool of a early autumn evening, I will sit on the side of the fountain and wait for the pump to stop and the four survivors to drift from under the matted roots into the clear water around the waterlilies. They will dart and glide, staying near each other and then swimming away to the corners of their rectangular sea, watching for food that might magically appear, and avoiding the ominous hole that ate their pale friend.





4 comments:

  1. I adore you, Rosie. (And your writing.) Anything else I could say about this piece would all boil down to those two thoughts, anyway...xoxox

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  2. Girl. This is tight. And broad. Two ideas that dont *go*, like elegant and powerful, which it also is while it isn't even trying to be. It is just *heart*, all heart, exactly like that little fist-sized thing that keeps us all alive, punch punch punch. It should be an adjective. as in, YOU are heart.

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    Replies
    1. thank you so much for getting this, my wise, kind friend. so much.

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