Crying piteously in the back of a taxicab that is ferrying me, with the discrete resoluteness of death’s own boatman, across expressways wet with melting snow. A chunk of ice breaks off a sign above and, in an overdramatic show of overdramatic destiny, slams down, hard, onto the hood of the car. The driver and I jump in our seats; he meets my eyes in the rearview mirror and we both laugh, a little shakily. Are we both imagining it—the swerve off the road? The shattering of the blue eggshell over the water, the smash-cut to red and then the fade-out to black? A lonely deformation of metal, bone and blood among the breakwaters of the freezing Yellow Sea?
I flip through books at the library, my eye catching on the repeated use of the word stars: shrug of stars, wheel of stars. The carpet has the flocked texture of a teddy bear. The fist lobbing between my ribs opens like a chest; a furred key, bronze teeth. I take it, hard. I let it bite into my palm. I drag myself through the mud; I lope across a field, only to hit a wall. Nothing comes easy. I take that hard. Moonrise, 2024. I lie on a stiff bed in an unfortunate Best Western, my mind purpling with hives. Mooncalf, 2024. Alive with a swarm of thoughts, I am alone but not alone. Obsessive worry is its own kind of possession and, in a way, its own kind of perverse comfort. How bad can I be, if I worry so much? Bad people surely don’t worry like this, do they? Outside the window, the snow blankets the tar.
The closest thing I have to religion is this: We’re born with nothing and have nothing throughout our lives. Only when we die do we finally latch onto something—a realization of roses, a dream of snow—and then, in a flash, it’s gone. In the meantime, I hold you like the water holds all us sharks and waves.
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