Let

My dad used to get us to play ball here. Well, my brothers played. I used to sit, back against that tree yonder, watching. Later, I started bringing books, many a long winter.

Now, it’s just me, in this backyard full of weeds from the vegetables mother used to grow. Although no matter how absurd I have to admit that I thought I’d come back here with children of my own one day. That shipped sailed even before its time. It’s a shut-in in this shut inn, working and drinking on the lounge couch, writing the memoir of a dead woman. Never thought I’d be back here like this, for good, a writer gearing to be washed-up. Makes me think about killing myself at least once a day, every day. Wish you were here. Then I could pretend to care about something. Anything.

These past nine months were the hardest and the best of my life, even mother wasn’t as happy as I, how could she be. We knew it couldn’t last. We’d tend the vegetable patch together, I haven’t the heart to do it now.

They worked at it together, mom and dad. When he was around, he used to keep my nephews and nieces away from my mother’s patches and she would work in peace. It smells like her. Dad, it feels, is still here, watching over, the house. I never did need watching over. How else would it still stand, after all the blows of these past two years.

Sometimes I come to sit by that same tree and read a classic in the sun, always my preferred arrangement. Other times, I bring a sheet to nap with the book on my face. I know the little princesses and the princes used to have picnics by the tree. But I don’t have the heart.

Sometime over the course of their not infrequent visits, not many overlapping mine, dad added a pond, between the patch and the trees. A quaint little thing, overlooking the copse. It stills looks aesthetic, with the autumn leaves dirtying its shallow depths.

They know they can come over whenever they want; it’s their home. Though I haven’t told them that yet.

I just want it to myself a few more months, to mourn the undead and the unborn. She was so warm.

Let me gather the courage to play a little ball and dissolve into a ball of tears.

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You know she used to ask me to come over over and over but I’d always say you have your hands full already. I knew they’d manage, I was too busy playing or pretending Girl vs. the big City game. I didn’t want to see them.

I never would hold her again.

I don’t know if she remembered in the end. Not like I did.

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It’s been blowing; the leaves are all up against the walls

I’ve been sleeping in all day, unable to sleep at all last night. This past year I got so used to her.

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The pond can see me, upside down, lopsided glasses, striped shirt, curly-wavy hair. I can feel the moisture against the pads of my feet. Let’s go sit by that tree.

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I can see under this golden bridge. The autumnal leaves are migrating. It’s actually beautiful.

She never was beautiful, to me. One does not love breathing.

I’ve been running away from beautiful women all my life. People like me, we are too greedy. We can’t be happy. 

I wûnder how it’d be like to jump off these hills, into the rocks.

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

― Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights

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October 24, 2019