She Left A Dirty Napkin On The Floor of My Minivan
scrunched up in the fabric of an old, torn sleeping bag,
remnants of a fast food picnic.
earlier,
standing across from each other,
me outside her window,
I looked at her, the self that she called her self,
her eyes looking back at mine, feeling naked,
her cheeks tensed in a forever pre-smile,
a quicksand of knowing and silence between us,
her hair freshly cut and pulled back,
a little messy, a little bohemian,
the romantic version of poverty,
it’s fun and it’s cute
until it’s not,
it was nice to see her that way,
it was like a little secret that the bigwigs never get to see.
standing there,
our happiness and our loneliness being fed by precisely the same thing,
“you’re so pretty,” she said.
“stop,” I said.
the two of us, always ready for the next crush to come along,
taking a precious respite there, raindrops plicking on the metal roof,
and, well,
I loved her then,
as I had felt before, but fallen out of since.
I was thinking of a time when she asked me
to remove her boots after coming home from work.
the laces were thick with water and, as she always did,
double-knotted. I struggled.
“jesus, I’m just going to cut these off.”
“no you’re not,” she said.
“you could just be like me and leave your shoes on until you go to bed.”
“no. I don’t understand you.”
“uh-huh.”
I smiled at the memory.
“yes?” she said through her window.
“oh, nothing,” I said.
“tell me.”
I couldn’t say what made me smile.
I couldn’t tell her that I loved her then.
I just asked her, “is this what you want?”
I expected her to ask for clarification of the question,
what do you mean?
but,
she didn’t.
there was a pause. an inhale. a little tilting of the head.
she hummed and then spoke,
“in the end, there’s no turning really.
it’s like those toy steering wheels you give to kids
to entertain themselves in the car.
and I think I’m afraid of going one way or the other.
both are too painful.”
the self she called her self was rocked, upended, “derailed,”
careening into trees,
twisting limbs beneath the sheets at night,
dark, baggy eyes in the morning.
maybe the self got up from bed and
snuck away for midnight snacks,
went for long drives after another argument,
leaving the body to sort it all out.
the self wanted to know itself apart from others,
apart from the body’s shifting, degrading skin.
what was the self if not the vision
it had given
when looking in the mirror,
when reading a book and putting it down,
if not the space between the ticking,
when laughing along with others
or becoming bored at the sound of its own voice?
maybe the self could not be placed,
could not be named,
could not be divorced,
could only, instead, be drug along,
unwillingly, indulgently
by the body which moored it,
which painfully stitched the shadow of the self to the
flesh of the body,
seamed ankle to ankle.
I asked her,
“are there certain songs you would like included on
your funeral playlist?”
“no. I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“do you have an outfit you’d like to be dressed in?”
“just burn me.”
she used the word
burn.
and I thought, well, that would be a sight.
no clinical, private cremation,
but a real public burning of the body,
elevated on the pyre,
the self still sewed on,
black smoke rising,
desperately waiting for someone
to throw them the seam rippers.
and I pictured her then, prepared for the flames
as I suppose I usually pictured her,
her thick hair down, no fuss,
a plain grey t-shirt, tight on her abdomen,
and her everyday combat boots, thick soled,
laced high and tight,
double-knotted.
“I suck in high heels,” she’d say.
it was simple.
it was how she looked when we went on walks together,
made appearances at dinner parties,
did yard work on the weekends,
fell in and out of each other, city by city.
the self moving always
in curved lines,
grasping the wheel,
wondering what other selves were thinking about
and wanting a little verbal validation that what she was doing
was alright.
“just tell me what to do and then I’ll feel okay.”
to move and be moved,
I mean really moved,
rare as it is,
standing in the face of each other then,
I wished I could tell her, well,
everything, really,
wished to help with the removal of boots again,
an unsexy chore done in a sexy way,
worlds communicated in just lingering glances,
wished to reach across to her
and close the gap in time and space,
wished to tell her,
wait a minute, hold the phone,
we are more than mere sidepieces searching for patronage,
we are more than starving,
more than imposters,
more than what the audience discusses after the show
when lying in bed with their date,
the very life you exchange for something
is measured how?
in time apart?
in losses of feeling,
finalized?
in overwhelming conversations
and the weight of our choices?
in an unsolvable loneliness?
in a self remembering the long drives and train stations,
the half-forgotten libretto
and the just out of reach
Debussy piece,
the teaching of heart and soul
and the neverending days of living in the city,
the city you’ll return to,
kicking up sparks,
the self making a name and hunting, always hunting,
a self pushing her hair over her ears,
a self embracing self much too nearly,
a self still wondering,
why does the body stay home at night?
would the body like to join me?
where do our bodies end
and our selves begin,
and what happens in between?
Thank you for reading Weird Catastrophe by Kody Cava. This post is public so feel free to share it.
