I did not donate the eyes to the eye bank. At some point I said, I can’t.
The parts that didn’t go to science were burned. And, no, I did not want the ashes. I told the woman to send the ashes to my brother. Because my brother was a better person than I was. He was a total asshole, I told the woman, but he was still a better person than I was. I said, He’s a total asshole. But in the grand scheme, I said. In the big grand scheme, I said. And I laughed, meaning I really laughed, and the recording went on, and the woman cleared her throat, and I just kept on going.
The day the ashes arrived, my brother called me and said, What the fuck, and I said, What, and he said, What the fuck, and I said, Grow up.
There are no more details to tell.
There is no reason to go into the why of my father.
Or the why of madness, which I cannot answer.
Or the why of addiction, which I also cannot answer.
Or the why of poor, which I also cannot answer.
Suffice it to say it’s always about a loss of something. Then a loss of some things. Then a loss of all things.
Then he was already dead, some might say.
What do you mean, I might say back.
If he had already lost everything, some might say, then he was already dead.
Yes, I might say.
Then you didn’t kill him, some might say as they moved toward me.
That’s not the point.
Then what is.
The doctor said he was sorry for our loss.
My brother said, You did the right thing.
Then a lot of serious shit happened in a lot of serious places. My mother drove to work. The doctor flipped a switch. My brother made coffee. The sun rose somewhere, set somewhere else. A brown recluse hunched in the dust.
And the truth is I don’t always leave in the mornings.
Some mornings the guy wants to get to work, and so I have to leave, but the truth is I don’t want to.
Some mornings I’m still lying in their beds, and they’re like, You need to leave, and I just lie there staring at their backs.
Some mornings I note the rib cage. I note the organs seething beneath the rib cage. I note the fragility of what does not, at night, seem fragile.
Some mornings I am not the whore they want me to be.
I am not the killer they want me to be.
Some mornings I try to no avail. To absolutely no avail. To no avail I try, and they get up to make coffee, and I get up and step into my skirt, and I pull on my shirt and walk home.
And the woman performs happy woman on a sunny street.
The woman performs this all feels good this all feels really good.
The woman pulls it together. She pulls it tight. She further tightens that which tightens.
There were late nights he would call from a pay phone, a friend’s house, a hospital, and because it was late, and because I was not poor, and because I was not ferociously mad, but, rather, mad mad, a machine answered my phone and lied that I wasn’t there eating in bed, watching TV, lied that I would return the call.
The machine would then say, Hello, stranger.
The machine would then say, It’s your father, stranger.
There were voices in the background.
There was traffic in the background.
I’m okay, stranger, the machine would then say.
There was screaming in the background.
There was me in my bedroom.
Pick up the phone, the machine would say loudly.
I know you’re there, the machine would say louder.
There was me turning the TV all the way up.
There was every poor soul looking downward.
There was me not believing in the soul.
There was me waiting, counting seconds, staring at the wall.
My mother said good-bye and disconnected first. Then the doctor said good-bye and disconnected. After the doctor disconnected, there was silence, but I said, Hello. I was hoping my brother was still on the line. I wanted to laugh or something. I said hello again, but my brother had disconnected too.
And before I ran downstairs to the massive kitchen that was my kitchen, I sat on the edge of my bed, still holding the phone.
I imagined the doctor arriving home that morning.
I imagined the doctor taking off his scrubs, washing his hands, and climbing into bed with his beautiful wife.
I imagined him easing into his wife’s heat, the way I once eased into my ex’s heat.
Before we had a sense of what came next.
Before we had a sense that something came next.
Firefighting.
Warrensburg, Missouri.
Me in my bed eating cold lo mein.
Me eating egg rolls, watching TV.
You have to trust me.
There was no grand scheme.
I would quit my job. I would leave that place. I would cross the state line. I would cross another. I would cross another.
And here I am now in a different state.
There is the man digging through the trash.
There is the gem buried in the mess.
Listen. It was not a shit hole.
It was not that.
Call it what you will, but there were cowboys there, for God’s sake, standing on corners in the biggest hats you have ever seen.
There were tornadoes that would send you into space.
There were spiders that would necrotize your ass.
There was a sky turning light. The same sky as everywhere turning light.
Call it what you will, but there I was, same as you were, under that sky.
There I was, just some poor soul. Same as you.
SUPERNOVA
When the plane crashed, I was all messed up. I was all kinds of all messed up. Because first we’d had drinks. Next we’d smoked. There were pills we’d taken from a bowl on the floor. The pills all did their different things. We liked not knowing what they would do. It didn’t matter which way we went.
When the plane crashed, I was on a couch. I was in this place, Club Midnight. It was where we went when it got too late. Or there was nowhere else to go. A guy was sitting next to me. He was a guy I knew from school. He was a guy I hardly knew. It didn’t matter that he was there. It was always a lot of us sitting there drinking. A lot of us always were sitting around.
There’s nothing to say about the guy. This is not the place for adjectives. I wasn’t even looking at him. The pills from the bowl had spilled to the floor. And no one was rushing to pick them up. I made no move to pick them up. I just sat there thinking they’d get crushed. I was waiting for the boot that would come to crush them. I was thinking of the sound the boot would make. I was thinking of the person attached to the boot. The beautiful person we all could blame.
At first the guy wasn’t looking at me. But when the plane was falling from the sky, I felt him writing on my arm. And before he could finish what he was writing, I said, Stop.