I found a dead body!
I can’t believe it, I’m so happy. You read about these things, see them on the news, but you never think it’ll happen to you. I began to think it never would happen to me, and began to wonder why I even got a fucking dog in the first place. But now I remember why!
What a wonderful, glorious day!
Eddie hung a right onto Linden Court, a short dead end, and pulled over to the curb beside some blue recycle bins. He eased the Civic into Park, and the doors locked with a clunk. He checked the rearview mirror. His daughter’s girl, Mia, just 10 months, was still conked out in the car seat. Her head and right shoulder sagged against the seatbelt, as if she were an astronaut buckled into a capsule. The fuzzy straps of her gray knit cap dangled beside her ears, framing her look of serious concentration.
We spent the anniversary of our son’s suicide tending a fire deep in the wild of the North Cascades, the sound of the Skagit River rushing by a constant reminder of the persistent truth of impermanence.
My husband’s boy scout training emerged in the form of confidence and a methodical approach to fire-making. We stacked logs in formation, two at a time. Poked the burning cuts of wood with a charred stick. Taming the coals and teasing out their heat.
Mother takes her Baby Girl to the park on the first warm day of the year. The bluebells have burst into bloom, turning familiar grass into a foreign seascape. Baby Girl wobbles with unpracticed feet on bulbous cerulean heads. She sways as if she floats atop the waves of a real ocean.
Mother loves to hold Baby Girl’s hand, keeping her steady, even if it means crouching till Mother’s young knees ache like an old woman’s. Baby Girl clenches her tiny fingers with determination: one step, then another, then another. Mother only wishes her daughter’s flesh did not stay so rigid and cold, despite the sun’s sweet caresses.
It’s August 31st, the day of the dead.Wilma’s lying in her coffin,hands flat under breastsand wrapped in rosary beads.Husband Amos hangs about near dark, deep curtains.With any luck, they’ll swallow him.Divorced daughter pales her face […]
Over on the other side of the lake there was a huge family celebrating. They had big rose-gold balloons saying 40!, and disposable barbecues. Their smoke floated over to us on the hot breeze.
Rose led me and Hazel down towards the lake. Around us, children rushed around with an orange frisbee. Kids vaped in the shade and couples drank prosecco. Dragonflies were hooking up, green with blue, in the shallows. Ducks were leading their ducklings across the water.
Monica sees her dead son in mirrors. He’s always standing somewhere in the room behind her, staring, silent, sullen. Sometimes in the mirror her son is younger, just five or six, playing with his trucks or trains. But most of the time he is his 10-year-old self. He watches her brush her teeth, put on makeup, straighten her clothes. He glares, resentful.
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Clive stared at the pond and ground his teeth. His clenched jaw ached. A wisp of grey hair flapped free from his comb over and twitched like an antennae in the icy breeze. But his glare didn’t stray from the water. His blood-shot eyes searched the murky surface but there was only one flash of orange.
Another fish was missing.
I cried the hardest at Amber’s funeral. Not that it’s a competition, or anything. All I’m saying is my tears were real. Wet and itchy, dripping down my face.
To be honest, I wasn’t crying because I was Amber’s best friend. I admit I wasn’t. That honor went to Jenna, who I was standing next to in the cemetery, under the shadow of a stone angel with a cracked wing.
But I was grieving too. For what could have been. What should have been. For Amber, for me, and for a friendship cut short.