Catastrophe Jones

It reminds me of patchouli, this stink of dirt against my nose and mouth. It’s a wet, crawling smell that has laid a clutch of eggs on my tongue and left me birthing the taste of rot from between my lips. Wrapped in a shroud, I lay still and fragile, feeling like birds’ wings. It’s cool and damp and dark here, and I am covered, surrounded, suffocated and drowning in the earth, in a hard casing of silk and wood.

I am in this cocoon, shrivelled and broken, but soon, I will find my way out. I will slit the bindings and push up out of the earth like a green thing seeking the sun.

I will uncurl again, and breathe something other than sour soil. Someday.

All I can really remember is that she asked me “How is it that they can let you go? Who would ever want to let you go?”

We both said a lot of things we meant that night, and what’s funny is how alcohol manages to sharpen verbal knives, but thicken the skin, as well. We could slash at one another for hours, and simply end up in fits of laughter.

Bummed cigarettes and made friends with girls who played cards while sitting on cold concrete. Ex dope fiend.

I don’t think her mother actually named her Minnow. I remember being her age.

I can still taste blood in my mouth.

It’s the only thing that really holds fear for me, still. Not death, not the dark, not even clowns or creepy little children. Actual heart-wrenching, blood-curdling fear. Beyond that. There isn’t a primal, basic fear reaction to love; I think my body made it up. It created it and calls it child.

This fear of mine confuses her; it wounds me, because I insist it’s not there; I can walk by the lack of it, blind and blithe and willfully disbelieving.

I have no fear.

I just… don’t love.

“Hush little baby; don’t say a word.”

Moonlight is cold, silver fire through blue night; it slices in from curtains and windowshades, leaving frigid gashes on the walls and smooth, polished puddles of ice on the floor. It washes the softness and leaves things bare and vulnerable, stark and sharp in contrast.

Babies shouldn’t cry so.

“Well I’ll sing you a lullaby.”

I loved to watch her sleep.

Such a sweet, peaceful look on her face. They say even the guilty look innocent while sleeping, with an expression that’s near angelic in its serenity. Having never seen an angel, I don’t suppose I could verify the truth of that claim, but I’m damned sure that there wasn’t anything more serene than the way her lashes didn’t even flicker, her mouth didn’t quirk.

Slow, steady breathing, a rhythm that only the body knows, having picked it up somewhere along the way in its forming. In and out, in and out, the heart drumming along, the lungs humming in complement, the body still and resting, half curled, half sprawled, tangled in sheets and holding to the pillow.

I tried convincing them it was when she was most natural, in that state, in that way, but they don’t make caskets wide enough for such a pose. I tried to tell them she wouldn’t be able to rest, wouldn’t be able to be peaceful on her back, arms folded, chin lifted. Who sleeps like that?

When they say “He looks just like he’s sleeping,” who the fuck do they think they’re kidding? No one sleeps like that, except Boris Karloff in bad movies. No one sleeps like that, except vampires and fanboy goth kids. No one sleeps like that; it’s just what you’re saying so you don’t climb in there, weeping or screaming. It’s just what you tell yourself so you can touch them without howling like the sun’s gone out.

No one looks like that, sleeping. I tried to tell them she wouldn’t be able to rest. I should know; I spent so much time watching her as she lay so utterly still, eyes closed, lips almost smiling. Almost. She wasn’t serene, and she didn’t look innocent or peaceful.

They put her in the ground that way, composed. Contrived. Nothing angelic about the way they were going to cover her with dirt. Suffocate that steady rhythm, the heart that kept time with mine. Nothing peaceful.

No one looks like that, sleeping.