Spring 2021 Issue - The Harvard Advocate

See, that’s the thing you’re not getting, the part

about the gods, or whatever you want

My left hand digging in my pocket. Three days ago a
Chevy parked outside the garage, waiting for the stars to
bleed into the ready ground. The clouds never rise: they
film the skies white. My hand scooping the wind, shoveling
light to make way. Then the mechanic, the shaking leg, the
loving familiar pain. The truck coughs final. Every arm
snapped—even young—heals slow. But we salvaged scrap.
The heavy hand, the girl. Today, the new sky. The first seen
cloud, the sun going quick. My pockets shrank fast. My
father buried far, my tiny hands big. Sun’s coming, sore
eyes. Don’t look yet.

Brief reprieve, then Junetime. The fledgling wins, just as
it does every year. It rushes back rotten. When the last of
the frost puddles, the bake-skinned child emerges, dumb
again. The echo in my drums again. Elena, Elena.
The once-remit light. I still answer to the name like a
dog. Pluck the petals, bald seeds, worry leaves thin. Each
blinding summer, the re-christening among the spindly paint-
brushes. I, running behind the barn. The dried wheat thins,
the frivolous blooming fields, a round-bellied robin giving
chase. I’m tired of regrowth, the youth, the perpetual
youth, the weeds and the boy with the shade hat. Lying
peacefully atop my dull body, bugs landing heavy on their
feet. I once held out my thumb, one brown eye closed, to blot
out the sun. Just my little hand. Now the light tastes sour. The
barn has grown empty and wet. The mold spread there for
years, I’m told. When they were new, the pricks were clean,
the sweet pear and cacti were shining and sweet. I place it all
again as the light leaked this morning: every frenetic bone,
every tooth-lodged seed, the sun in my skin. Landing any-
where, light refracts broken onto me. Well, I opened my rickety
fridge, the sudden cold relief, the wrinkles wrong. I ate every
cherry, let them bleed in my mouth, putrid, forcing the swallow.

One of the horses was dead and it made for a
start to the day. Warm for the month for the year
so far. The kind that comes with sun and rain and
rain with lightning. That kills horses. Apparently.
I didn’t see the horse. I saw your face cave and
saw it come back. There’s no good antonym for
caving. Some things take work and time. You
narrow your eyes when you look far ahead. Your
pupils contract in the sunlight. Then you smile.
The future is mostly a whole lot of physiological
change. And expectation. And then some. When
I think about death my stomach hurts. When I
think about horses I am usually wrong. I thought
horses stood while they slept, but they can sleep
lying down. Bodies at rest become bodies at
work. Even decay can be no easy feat. Requires
work and time. Are we like or unlike horses. We
are not like this horse. This horse is different.
This horse is dead. But the field looks greener
than it looked before. The water pools where our
feet have moved the earth. It pools on the road. It
doubles us. I want to know if there is ever
enough symmetry. At Trader Joes the answer to
symmetry is lots. Pastels, gold lettering. I want to
buy an orchid. $12.99 in a ceramic, purple vase.
It feels like they’re reading my mind. When my
card is declined the staff is kind. They say it
happens to all of us but it’s happening to me. I
feel like I’m watching myself watch the horse.
But the grass is very green.

My holiness was an accident. It happened because I had nothing else to eat. I had stopped eating eggs after the salmonella outbreak on the news in February, salad greens after the third report of E. coli, dairy after listeria killed a pregnant woman from Georgia. Anneke, my wife, said I needed therapy, but extreme caution seemed reasonable to me. Dirt full of feces, ungloved fingers, shed hair and dead skin, utensils not rinsed in hot water, air oozing into sealed containers. Eventually I survived on fruit and overbrewed black coffee. Anneke gave up cooking for herself, ate Greek yogurt and packaged salads and didn’t clean out the refrigerator, which began to smell sweet and stagnant.

It’s spring.

It’s April.

Eastertime, too.

It’s around four o’clock in the afternoon.

In every memory I have of flying into Kentucky, it is raining. Thick clouds scrape against the plane until city lights are visible, and as we grow closer, I see dark stains stretch across weathered cement buildings.

On my left knee, there are two fine, slim scars, silver as a grey hair. The skin is rough and textured, mirrored on my right one, a similarly ugly and knobby joint. When I straighten my legs, the pair become an unhappy married couple: folds and creases form like wrinkled faces. I probably see them as old people because of the wisdom I attach to them. My knees are too flimsy to protect me when I fall off a bike and so rigid they snap if I tangle my skis, but the act of kneeling has been, in my experience, a great emotional teacher.