So What Now?

There is something about happiness that arouses my suspicions;
that relinquishing my skepticism offers open invitation to be suckered in
and prodded alongside the grinning masses toward some sort of pseudo-Nirvana.

Alone on the stoop out back, my fingers grow icy from the bottle in my hand, and the wind claws at me, harsh, but reliable. The darkness strides by like a rude stranger who doesn’t look up when I say hello; lowers its head further instead, pretending to inspect the dirty concrete. The oblivion is validating and I feel the power of my own volition rising from my legs, through my chest, to the bullseye in my brain.

It wasn’t long ago that he convinced me to marry. I didn’t see the point in doing so, and so he made the point that there was an equal non-point in not doing so, and so I did. The baby was next and we birthed it together in a tub on the living room floor. Because this—this was something I was going to get right.

Then my father died without a will, and my brother said that it was only right that we bury him, even though I thought the idea of decomposing against the process of preservation was obscene. It was important, he said, because when the Lord comes to save us, we need to be there waiting.

That night I had a dream—the kind of dream that you hope is a dream before you even remember you’re still asleep. A giant meteor blew through the ozone and crashed in the backyard of the house across the street. Then, as I watched through the window, there came a second, only this time the impact made a great cracking sound, like overhead thunder that wants to snap your bones, and I watched, frozen, as the smoke rolled in and the earth began to crumble.

In the startled sweat of night, I reached over to seek warm skin. I swallowed hard, and realized that swallowing is an action performed only by the living. Then I swallowed again, just to be certain.

2009