The Year I Was Gone

Away

We stop on the bridge to watch the Osprey gliding over the river, drifting through the drizzling rain. They scan the water for fish.  Wings open wide, cutting through the drooping gray clouds, tracking the silent movement just beneath the water’s surface.  Rain drops soak the downtown brick buildings, streak across the sleepy storefront windows. Headlights from the passing cars slide along the shining pavement. Rainwater spraying up from tires, the drone of rundown engines. We watch the Osprey’s quiet hunt; watch them fly farther and farther away, following their wings as they evaporate in the fog, receding into the gray until they disappear completely.

You stare out through all of this gray, the fog and the heavy morning clouds, your eyes fixed on the blank horizon. My hair is damp and heavy against my back. I listen to the water flowing beneath our feet, count the leaves scattered all along the riverbank. 

What would happen if we jumped? I say. My voice sounds strange. Raspy and too quiet. Muffled by the rain and fog. You hear me anyway. 

We would probably break our legs, you say. Then the current would pull us under.

The smell of mud and drenched tree branches. I count fallen leaves and breathe the gray air. Suddenly, I am very, very tired.

Under and away. I say.

That's just a guess, you say. I don't think anyone's ever tried to jump from here. And then as an afterthought, Don't you try. Only half joking.

I lean over the edge of the bridge. Raindrops dripping from my fingertips, trickling down to the dark water below.

I have been away for a long time.

Summer

Ash and Dust

This is what we breathe.

Wildfire season brings us smoke and soot. Brings us charred winds carrying the scent of scorched fields. Brings us crimson sunsets. Brings us a message every time we take a breath: You can lose all of this.

We breathe.

How fragile all of this is.  

Dust floats through fading daylight. Moats swirling in thin sun rays stretching through the window. My shadow falls across the wall as I put my hands on the sill and rest my forehead against the glass. Outside, the world burns. I watch the smoldering horizon.  Pale red sunlight on my skin, dust clinging to my fingertips.   

Smoke drifts in from the north. From the west. From the south. Smoke drifts in and hangs in the air like thick fog. The sky disappears; the mountains slip away.  At dusk, I walk through dry, dead grass; move my fingertips through a sepia haze to touch heat-singed petals of a wilting Hibiscus flower.  How easily broken we all are. 

Ash and dust.

We breathe.

Your Name

You dream of helicopters and crumbling cities.

We were under attack, you tell me, and the sky was full of helicopters. The city looked like a war zone, but I couldn’t tell if we’re in the past or the present. All of the buildings were collapsing. I heard people weeping and I was crawling through the rubble trying to find a place to hide. You were there, too.

What was I doing? I say. 

You were just a shadow. Standing in a broken doorway.  I was calling for you, but you wouldn’t move, you stood completely still. And that's how the dream ends, you say. I'm calling for you but you can’t move.

You're sure it was me?

You look up at the sky. There are no helicopters, only a flock of blackbirds rising from a knot of tree branches.

I was calling your name.

Very Far

If you had a time machine, I ask my littlest nephew, where would you go? Would you go to the future or would you go to the past?

The past, he says.

How far into the past?

Very far.

How far? I say. To the 1800’s?

Before that, he says.

The 1700's?

Even further.

To the Middle Ages?

Before that.

To the time of the dinosaurs?

Before that.

Before what?

Before any of this was here, he says.

Before the Earth was here?

Before the universe. I want to see the universe being born. I want to see how we got here.

That’s far, I say.

I want to know why we’re here, he says.

Me too, I say.

  

I want to know why.

That is very far.

Fall

Thief

I hear his footsteps first. At dawn, every sound is amplified. I’ve been standing here for a long time, half-awake in the slow breeze drifting in through my open kitchen window, watching the daylight slowly filter through the waning early morning darkness.  Another night of no sleep and I’m stuck in a kind of hazy trance, watching blackbirds balance on half-bare tree limbs. My eyes are sore from being open so long and a dull thudding somewhere inside my head makes my vision blur and pulse, makes the yellow grass flicker.

I hear his footsteps in the alley. Loose bits of gravel and broken glass crunching under his boots. I hear his footsteps and then I see him. He looks like any other ragged character wandering alone through a back alley: greasy hair and torn blue jeans; threadbare t-shirt and no jacket, despite the cold wind pushing against him; unshaven face and faded tattoos covering wiry arms. He smokes his cigarette and walks slowly through stray bits of litter strewn through the alley gutter: torn-up scratch tickets, crushed cans, empty whiskey bottles.  He walks and smokes. 

He doesn't see me; I'm just a shadow in a windowsill. His eyes are fixed on my backyard and he looks hard at the ground beneath the pine tree at the edge of my lawn. He walks and smokes. He makes it to the end of the alley and stops to throw his cigarette down in the street, digs in his shirt pocket and pulls another one out. After he lights it, he turns around and walks back to the chain-link fence separating the alley from my grass. White smoke floats up from his lips as he runs his fingertips along the metal. He walks over to my tree again and stares at the ground beneath it. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wails and all of the neighborhood dogs start to yelp and whimper. He doesn't flinch. He stands at my fence and stares at my yard. He stares for a long time. Then he drops down to his knees. 

I'm just a shadow in the windowsill, watching a man fall to his knees and push his hands through the gaps in the bottom of my gate. He struggles and twists, stretches his fingers as far as he can. Not far enough. Whatever he is after is just out of reach. He gets back up on his feet and takes a long drag from his cigarette before tossing it in the gutter. The siren is long gone now and the dogs have stopped their crying. Everything is quiet. He looks up and down the alley and when he is sure he is not being watched, he grips the rail of the fence and starts to climb. The metal rattles and clangs and the sound makes him stop. He looks around once again to make sure he's still alone, then carefully leans over the top of the gate and reaches out for the bottom tree limbs. Not far enough. He steps back and stares. Lights another cigarette and finally gives up, disappearing down the alley with empty hands. 

I wait until I know he is gone and not coming back, then I head down to the yard. At first, I see only fallen leaves and scraggly twigs tangled in the grass. Nothing unusual, nothing worth stealing, so I unlock my gate and retrace his steps through the alley. I walk through the same litter-strewn gutter, crunch over the same gravel and broken pieces of glass. Just like him, I scan my lawn, trying to see what he saw. I look for a wad of cash or a necklace or a bracelet or a ring. Anything of value. I see nothing. I walk to the tree, just like he did, and drop down to my knees. I reach my hand through a gap in the chain-link fence.

And there it is. Just beyond my fingertips: a bright Blue Jay feather, glowing in a pile of dead pine needles.

Winter

  

Sinking

“Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.”

-David Foster Wallace

I accept that I will probably always live with this depression. I have lived with it longer than I’ve not lived with it. It never lessens. It swells and swells.

Someone once told me that the reason I am depressed is because I like depression.

You love to be sad. You’re in love with sadness.

Sadness. 

This sadness is an anchor clamped to my heart. It pulls and pulls.

Down.

A dread that never lifts. A dread that blooms and grows. It is there when the day begins and it is there when the day is done. It is with me night after night as I stare up at a blank ceiling. Too tired to sleep. My heart like a dead weight. Dark circles under bloodshot eyes. My brain like a brick, my head heavy with fog. I cannot focus on anything but the currents of static streaming through my skull, and when people speak to me their words are lost in all of this white noise. I try to make sense of what they are saying, try to concentrate on their moving lips, but I hear only fragments of sentences, just a few disjointed words. Their voices like tuning forks pulsing through static. 

I do not love this. 

Depression is not beautiful or even remotely appealing. It’s gloomy and colorless. It is a disconnection from everything around you. It is a slow loss of self. I could say it’s like falling through a very deep, dark well, but that sounds almost too romantic. Too free. It’s more like sinking in murk.

A drawn-out, lifeless sinking.

You love to be sad.

I don't think that's true.

I did not seek this. There was never a map showing the way here. There certainly isn’t a map showing the way out.

You are in love with sadness.

I don’t think that is true at all.

Spring

Embrace

"Someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace."

-Leonard Cohen

And then someone does try to jump from the bridge. 

The first warm day of spring and the river flows high with melting snow running down from the mountains up in the north. No Osprey hunting fish today. Instead, it's a man threatening to jump who hovers over the water, clinging to the side of the bridge.

The police have closed the bridge and a cluster of fire trucks are blocking the connecting roads. I see it all unfold from the top floors of the downtown library. I stand by the window watching the flashing red and blue lights, the line of cars and trucks jammed on the shut-down streets, the mass of firemen and policemen trying to calm the man down and ease him away from the edge.

Don’t jump, I say silently in my head. Don’t do it. I repeat it over and over. As if by concentrating hard enough, I can will him to stay on the bridge. Don’t.

I feel useless and far away. The man inches closer to the edge.

He leans farther out over the water. The firemen and policemen lean closer to him. And I lean closer to the library window, my breath sliding over the glass. We all freeze like this. Everyone leaning forward. Waiting.

Don’t jump. Don’t.

He doesn’t.

One of the policemen manages to talk him out of it. He reaches his hand out and the man finally takes it, backing away little by little from the edge.

I watch from the window as the policeman guides the man along the bridge and helps him to regain his balance. 

Don’t jump. Don’t jump. Don’t jump. I keep repeating this silently in my head. Though, I don’t know who I’m saying it to now. I can see it’s all over. 

I watch the two men slowly make their way across the bridge as they hold on to each other, the cop and the would-be jumper, stuck in a half embrace.

Don’t jump.

Summer

Float

The smell of chlorine and damp beach towels. Wet footprints of all sizes splotch the cement surrounding the pool. My youngest nephew lingers with the smaller kids in the shallow water. They are all sweeping their hands back and forth through the pool’s surface, making waves that crash together to create a miniature stormy ocean. At the opposite end of the pool, the older kids are diving into the deep water, doing somersaults and cannonballs. 

All afternoon, my niece has been travelling from one end of the pool to the other, trying unsuccessfully to teach my nephew how to swim. She tries to show him different strokes, tries to show him how to plug his nose and dive deep down under the water to touch the floor of the pool. He’s having none of it. He has inherited my fear of water and he refuses to get his head wet.

Don’t be scared, my niece says to him. It’s just water.

I look up from my book every now and then and wave to them.

Be careful with each other, I say. Be nice to each other.

As soon as they leave my mouth, my words are drowned out by squealing laughter and splashing water. My niece and nephew don’t hear me. They are locked in an intense conversation, and my niece keeps pointing to the deep end of the pool. 

Be careful with each other, I say again.

My nephew listens to my niece. He looks at the opposite end of the pool and then back to her. He takes a deep breath and nods, then lifts his arms over his head so she can hook her arms around his chest. She begins to pull him slowly through the water and he closes his eyes as tight as he can.

See? She says to him in her calming voice. I’ve got you. You’re floating now.

When he realizes that he’s not going to sink to the bottom of the pool, he relaxes a little and opens his eyes as they glide slowly through the water together.

I’ve got you, she says again. I won't let go. You’re floating.

The pool has become quiet all of a sudden. No more squealing and diving and splashing. I notice that all of the older kids have followed my niece’s lead, grabbing a hold of their little brothers and sisters and helping them to coast through the pool.

You’re floating.

All of them, together, floating in the pale blue water.

And maybe that is why we are here. Maybe that’s the whole purpose. To carry and to be carried.

To learn how to float.