Often the inconceivable comes true. An unlikely scenario plays out, an uncontrollable fate unfolds, a puzzled victim recovers, analyzing and repeating the incident, living in the past suspended in the present, a thick fluid congealing around every attempt to struggle, to break free, to resume one’s life. The limbs on rusty little hinges, every movement reminding you of limitation, every bone in its socket creaking and lumbering into place finding its nook among settled and worn pockets. Spiky bones of rotting fish, brittle nails grown long but weak, twisted bed sheets and hard dry crumbs on countertops, this is the caulk between shower doors, precariously sheltering wet from damp. Proceeding grave is gallows. Then tomb, catacomb, sea or ash:  a lengthy withdrawal into eminent domain.

The scissors scratch through the itchy twine, unraveling edges. The dog’s saliva softening bone; carving toothy grooves. Calling back into focus the wrongs you have committed, the people you inadvertently hurt by not loving, the ones you left without remorse; the distance you maintain. In silence you suffer the wish you left hidden, in the world you witness the life you weren’t given. You attempted to love but were held by the truth of all you had witnessed.  The memory of scrap yards with hollow shells of automobiles, surrounded by tall weeds and stunted grass. Sun-bleached logos on crushed aluminum cans; abandoned filters of cigarettes.

Your past is a disposable diaper still waiting to decompose. Nothing organic remains. Illuminated with the buzz and hum of a fluorescent bulb, smolder creeping in from the ends, blackening its resolve. Walking, shuffling feet, casting shadows underneath doorways, the weight of fear pulling like gravity, your spine to the bed. Paralyzed, you wait for the many tiny sutures to dissolve. The scar can be traced with a finger too calloused for nuance, toughened by persistent injury. Prickled by the needlepoint, burned by the impatience. Knuckles bleed from daily fumbling with indifference, your voice a hoarse whisper reminding you not to fail. Spine compressed, your neck misaligned, pride takes its toll pushing the cartilage, tugging the monofilament.

Barefoot on rotting tree stumps, cobwebs clinging to splinters, bugs parading in disintegrating bowels; shadow at my back, sun blinding me. The future is hard to walk towards with hope, the present being defined by successive moments of hesitation. Sometimes I venture to walk sideways, scuttling like a crab, hitting my hipbones on jutting corners and corridors too narrow to navigate. I feel like the woman who kept adding rooms to her house for fear if she stopped building she would die. The inevitable comes no matter what we do to ward off its threat. No tincture or spell to undo the undoing.

Better to be out in the world than at home alone with my thoughts. My undoing has always been my thoughts maybe also my feelings and my struggle to control things outside of myself. The tricky way I refine thoughts, smooth their edges, shaping them into an hourglass, waiting for time to dilute them, expel them, staining my hands. The thoughts that trigger the feelings, the feelings that are valid but irrational and then the explanation that tries to rationalize the feelings. It is all a tricky dialogue between self idealized and self-actualized. The person I want to be is unencumbered by insecurity and does not interpret the actions of others as personal and internalize them as an inward struggle.

Protecting yourself, building your armor, a black insect shell.
Tightening the abdomen, twisting the nettles, like a cyst with teeth and hair, the uncomfortable feeling grows. Outside the world is indifferent. Inside the walls of the apartment seem plaintive. Chalk drawn on asphalt, erased with a palm. You wander into yourself, cyclonic. The vortex is death; the resistance is life.

Being ignored, abandoned or simple not being wanted conjures thoughts of vast deficiency. This is an old wound. The unlovable, the old record the familiar tune.

Under the stairs, the cellar, the attic. Call to me now from force of habit. The smell of black dye in fabric, a promise you made now rescinded: Keep in touch. You crawled like a wounded animal to its death, never to be heard from again.

My rabbit died.

Two shoes abandoned, sucking me into the whirlpool, the spinning water in the toilet flushed…my rabbit was not behind the bathtub, was not next to the paper maché igloo, I looked for her under the stairs. In the third place, she was stiff on her side behind the wheel of my bike. I didn’t want her to die alone. I failed her. Maybe it was the heat, maybe she stroked out like the elderly, warned to take care on hot days. I wonder if she was thirsty. I don’t think she struggled. Did she just give up, waiting for me to come home?

After work I took a look at the sky, a storm was brooding, the wind was racing. The sky worn blue silver denim, the color of old blue eyes…I felt like something bad was going to happen, maybe a tornado. So I walked straight home, not going to the bank, not stopping at a store. I didn’t know she would be waiting for me, I didn’t know that was the terrible thing.

I didn’t know what to say; I was non-verbal.

She was stiff. I applied pressure to try and curl her gently into a smaller ball. Her body resisted. I tucked her into a 2 gallon Ziplock bag, smoothing her ears. I drew the excess air from the bag with my breath and pressed the seal closed. I repeated this until she was nested in 3 plastic bags. I placed her in the freezer, at first laying her sideways then not knowing what to do with the ice cube trays, I rotated her. She fit so neatly there, room to the right for 2 stacked ice trays. She was no bother in death, as in life.

Then it started to hit me, the feeling of loss.

I was washing her bed; I left it soaking in the tub, expecting that she would lie in it again. The litter box, the igloo, the water and the food bowls. The limp and rubbery carrots and dandelion greens left wilting. The hay and the branches: the fur and her droppings. I couldn’t look at it anymore, I could not have reminders of the once living now dead. Through tears I filled a garbage bag with her things. What if I wanted to smell something of hers again?

When I opened the freezer I thought her ears look flattened so I opened 1-2-3 plastic bags and tried to smooth them. I knelt and cried while stroking her soft ear between my thumb and my forefinger. I miss her; I miss her being alive.

Sometimes I forget she is gone; I look for her still.