that far away feeling
escaping & returning to the body
I must let go now.
Let you go.
Love is too often
The answer for staying.
Too seldom the reason
For going.
I drop the line
And watch you drift away.
All along
You thought
The fiery current
Of your lover’s breast
Pulled you to the deep.
But it was my heart-tide
Releasing you
To float adrift
With seaweed.- delia owens, where the crawdads sing
i felt the splotch of fabric covering the small of my back dampen as i fiddled with the audio settings on my car radio, trying to shove a cacophony of corporate noises back into my phone. it was 100 degrees and i pulled over not even 100 yards from the office, realizing i should probably take my 2:30 meeting.
droning on and on with rehearsed normalcy, we discussed updating our social media strategy, and i made a point of chiming in with believable regularity. i turned the air conditioning knob back to its highest setting each time i finished talking. inexplicably, i was embarrassed to be in my car, and felt removing the muffled hum of the AC from the sonic equation would be enough to disguise my location.
it’s possible i’ve said it before, but i’m a very good actress. no one could have known i awoke at 5 a.m. to a phone call from my mom, sobbing with a depth only death can dig. my grandfather, her father, now gone beyond the veil, i scrambled for a foothold in my own waking state. my tether to reality became a brittle, fraying rope. if i’d pulled any harder, it would have snapped.
this is my second dance with death this year, a dismal sort of tango i’ve managed to avoid for most of my life. death leads, unsurprisingly, my body limp in its claiming arms, spins me around the proverbial floor with no discernible rhythm until it grows tired of supporting my weight.
when my cousin died in november, i couldn’t cry until the funeral. i only cried for my grandpa when i saw a photo of him and my mom. i wonder if i’m broken, if i’m heartless, or whatever. more likely, i’m just a person, and like anyone, trying to be good. i think i want the tears to come to show the out can match the in.
on the fourth of july, which feels like a hundred years ago, i drove up the canyon and went for what i would consider the quintessential utah hike. this is mostly because it included an aspen meadow, a geographical feature i was told later that same day was “my essence on paper.”
something they don’t tell you is that any point, you can veer off the trail and simply hang out (metaphor). when the forest opened to field, i marched across it toward a small cluster of aspens between which i knew my hammock would fit perfectly. i read twelve pages of where the crawdads sing, ate a granola bar, and peed behind a bush. it was so quiet, save the leaf rustle, that i started to get the jeebs.
the higher i went, the more lupine seemed to erupt from the hillside. columbines hid in shady pockets of forest, each cluster an X marks the spot. i must have easily 200 photos of columbines in my camera roll. i realized when i leave utah, that’s the tattoo i’m adding to my floral arm.
the end of the trail was an overlook so awe-inspiring i laughed. when i squinted my eyes i could make out three slivers of waterfall on the rock face. a young couple with a baby approached silently and, in perfect mormon cadence, asked me if i’d like a photo. i could tell it wasn’t just because they wanted a photo of themselves, which reminded me of when someone calls you by your name at a party but you can’t for the life of you remember theirs.
“so just so you know, you can hardly see your face,” the woman said tentatively, as if i’d explode with rage upon discovering my weird smile was conveniently obscured by the shadow of my hat.
“that’s all right,” i said nicely, still posed in a benign, camera-facing posture that felt performative at best and at worst, communicated a distinct unfamiliarity with the human body. there’s a reason i prefer to stay behind the lens.
i wrote in my notes app:
on the trail i love hearing other people talk about the lupine because it makes me feel less crazy for loving being so obsessed with the lupine
i have spent my whole life devoted to this land except for the portions therein i was devoted to music, or food, or the like
sometimes if you catch it just right, the shadow of two aspen leaves looks just like a butterfly
my devotion is just this: only sometimes something, changing
on the drive back to town, none of my music sounded quite right. i was bored or was boring; i can never quite tell which.
last night
and i tried writing at the wine bar, but two men sat down at the table next to us and wouldn’t shut up about ordering (or not ordering, they just couldn’t decide!) the charcuterie board. it was the sort of meaningless dialogue that sounds like a fly buzzing around your head.
i’m somehow always driving home; the sun had just set, the sky a brilliant gradient of orange to blue. i love turning the corner onto 1300 south and the entire valley opening before me, empty and full at once like the tide gone way out.
i thought of my family in georgia gathered around my grandpa’s body, the tide that, as usual, went out, and then refused to come back in. is this death: a refusal? or is it simpler than that? an impersonal extinguishing like a lightbulb burnt out?
these are the sullen moments i feel hollow and heron-lonely, thinking about all the miles between me and my old life. i’m still a stranger in the west and it takes death to remind me: if i died here, in this desert, they’d have to move me back east to the pines.
i don’t know what it is, but i feel so far away, like a nightmare when you’re screaming and no sound comes out. when i’m absent from my body, all those weird photos make sense. i can’t know somewhere i never am, never explore, never fully claim. my body is a fugitive, escaped, and still at large. i live in it, but not with it, like a hermit crab with some subconscious, biological understanding that it will always grow out of itself.
i cook a late dinner in silence: grilled chicken salad i can mindlessly replicate tomorrow. pulling a head of red leaf lettuce from the fridge, i consider how much i can use in good conscience while conserving myself an adequate portion for the next day. i have already pulled too many leaves to equal half – too late to do much about it, toothpaste i can’t put back in the tube.
after dinner i scoop myself a gigantic bowl of vanilla ice cream, then in the final blue light of day amble out the back door to the raspberry bush. i pick a bulging handful with which to drown my dessert and sit down in the front porch chair to eat it.
when a wasp lands at my feet, i don’t know if it’s apathy or bravery that keeps me still and firm in my seat. my lack of fear might be misplaced – the rumors are true – i’ve never been stung.
my neighbor is mowing her lawn in the dark, which is funny and strange like everything. the sprinklers come on and i see it: all water someday joins the sea.
dedicated to my grandfather, james chiariello, sr.
march 18, 1941 - july 9, 2024
obsession of the week
the veggie burrito from tacotime. i’m not sure if this chain exists outside the southwest, but it’s sort of like if taco bell gave more than 15% of a shit.
the feeling in this is so palpable holy shit this is beautiful
beautiful piece as always