Poloma-rose

Short prose. Cover painting: "Standing Watch", Laurel Daniels (2014).

The dogwoods back near the winding roads in Mouville and their mustard and pumpkin-colored leaves were why Autumn was my favorite season. Or, it still is. Hearing the river that seems always to be rushing louder in the morning, and slower in the evening—still pushing a balanced pulse through the web of creeks, the earthly veins, upon and after the moonrise. I love the squash that this favorite autumn of mine would bring for my mother and me to roast with their seeds, the spotted white-tailed does in heat, the spells of nighttime getting longer and darker and bluer. The more I think about it, the more I miss it. The humanity of it.  And then I feel silly for missing something on the earth that I can't seem to quit wandering, anyway. To wander the earth once someone’s tried to take you away from it is an odd feeling. 

Somebody left my body in the salt marshes of Georgia’s coast. Migrations and life are flying above it, above me. It took a couple of days to discern it. It was death. Not the kind of death I’d been ready for. Naturally yes, that took a couple of days to let that all bleed out, all of the shock and the envy. To move from the place where they put me, the monsters. Stubbornly smelling of gasoline, the hot sandpaper against my cheek, those monsters. And I was afraid. So afraid that I noticed the stars moving, I mean really moving, when I was working to understand that I could walk alongside the deer, swim alongside the alligators, and fly alongside the birds. That I’d been granted at least that after paying the biggest price one can pay. I am not stuck in the marsh, watching the marsh rabbits sip the water that I’d bled all the anger into. Twitching to no rhythm. I’m still afraid. But not entirely stuck. And I have the nerve to look for something beautiful, some wildflowers or colorful grass to get lost in. Found it after finding the nerve to move my limbs after night after night of the salt eroding my skin. The poor marsh—it was meant to be undisturbed.

First, I’ll wait for the sun to suck this heaviness out of me and the dress I still wear, to not just dry my skin but to warm it. But waiting for the sun, patiently, isn’t enough. To feel its warmth, to need it at all, you must be alive. I know this because I rose, and I was dry, not particularly warm or cold. Expecting to be atrophied, and I wasn’t. And really, when I rested below the water I was dry too. Dry really isn’t the best way to put it, nor is ‘dead’ the best way to explain my being here, but that’s the way you and I understand it, right now. Because being dead means a couple of things to us. Maybe to cover our bases. So we say people are gone, or they’re in a better place, which are two different things. We say they are no longer with us, which could mean either gone or in another place, better or worse. We say people passed away or passed on. We often don’t say they disappeared. But when you ask someone where they think we’ll go when it’s all said and done, you’re asking about their imagination. You're asking about their fantasies, their wishes. These find themselves in prayers. In dreams. I know where I am. I’m still on the earth, with the wild fiddler crabs who want to use their big claws to braid my thick hair. At the very least comb the fairy knots out. I know where I am. I am gone, to someplace worse. To a place different than I thought I would go. Someone brought me here. Not something, not a familiar hand. Someone brought me here because they believed that I belonged to them, and then to nobody. And because I couldn’t find a way of my own in, it may take a long time to find my way out.