MADE TO RISE

The Abyss

 

        He splayed across the floor perfectly like an embodiment of the sleepy poet. She looked down to his resting face, nestled amidst the dramatic brown curls sprouted from that beautiful head of his. Her eyes flowed like water along the lines of his limbs and she wondered how long she would see him this way, the two of them sheltered in love. Even now, she felt a screw twisting in her neck, a stalling irritation and depressing hopelessness. She imagined herself hanging from a branch, and the branch was his arm, the tree his body. Before the move, the bark grew against the contours of her hands until she could no longer move them to get down. And she wanted to get down. 

        But the change was a good one. They could start again, see new things in each other illuminated by red leaves and wild grasses skirting around their home. In her mind’s eye his tree roots grew up to make a seat for her. She liked to be near him, though her lifted arms often grew tired, aching to be free to touch the ground again. As she cradled him in her eyes, rejoicing in the morning sun that had spread across his bare legs, she knew serendipity would soon come spinning into them. 

        Past the window a crow marched through grass the length of its legs and stopped where a clump of moss grew between a couple of flat stones. Its head lowered, close to the glowing tendrils, neck jerking this way and that until the black beak shoved into soft green. For a moment she felt a severe disappointment. Her curled legs tightened underneath the fleecy blanket. A frown drew her cheeks down into ripples across her chin as she mourned the loss of that perfect patch. She could cry. Here on the couch she sat alone inside with him (always inside with him) looking out to a world misty and unfamiliar. She could be out there watching beautiful things grow and die and grow again. She could have seen that moss, could have gotten down close to it. She would have loved it. Her eyes returned to him. “What’s wrong?” His neck had rotated to watch her.

        “The crow out there’s picking that moss apart. On the rocks.”

        “It’ll come back if he’s not too tedious.”

        I know that. Don’t you know? I know that. You just have to console my every thought. Is this your way of healing? Is it? I’m not weak. I’m not fragile, you should know. False concern, like you’ve got nothing else to say. She saw his eyes study hers. Those brooding thoughts had stewed in her expression, she knew. Now she felt guilty for letting them in, not letting them go. 

        “What’s wrong?” he said softly, blowing air from his lungs into the room.

        There is nothing here, it’s rash. She noticed the strong pulse in her skull, a muggy bubble of her own creation, and wished it would fade, feeling out of control. She wondered how sadness could so easily turn to irritation. This is ridiculous, it’s nothing. “Nothing. I was just thinking about the garden. Where’s the post hole digger?”

        “I put it in the shed. We’ll work on it together next weekend.” He brought two elbows under himself and lifted his shoulders from the ground to look at her closely. “What is that in your face?”

        “Nothing! I think that moss thing is bothering me. Silly things. It’s pathetic.” Behind her smile she pondered the anger awake inside, the subconscious preparation to overwhelm reason with spite. It made her sad, the knowledge of this habitual reaction to coil up or explode. 

        He just looked at her, unconvinced maybe. Or perhaps the sunlight had lifted onto her body, painting her skin gold and glowing with a kind of summer beauty. She wouldn’t know, occupied by heavy thoughts. They sat comfortably for a few minutes, apart from each other, her eyes toward the window, his observing faces on the wall.

        When the crow flew out of frame she sat up with a straight spine and stretched both arms up high. “Do you want breakfast? I’m hungry this morning.” 

        “Yeah I’m hungry.” He got up from the floor, flexed his legs and moved toward her, reaching a hand out to rub her neck as he passed. “You know it’ll grow back.”

        “I know. I know.” 

 

________

 

        Leaving the house without a coat, she walked far out in the garden, deep into green and exposed veins of earth. A web hung by her shoulder stretched across the stems of two rhododendrons, blowing gracefully by the breeze of morning. Mirrored spheres suspended in air, random and still along the spiraled silk. Sunbeams flew like birds over water, their warmth progressing in slow motion, parted from earthly bodies by a penetrating coolness. She stopped for a moment to observe the empty web, realizing the beauty in abandon, the vitality of destruction. A home of the spider, still alive, living despite all the changes. It was no longer a house, either, but a shrine. The breeze blew into her and she felt like a waterfall, flowing down, watching it gush and flow away, always replaced with different atoms converging as seconds pass through millennia. All pain left her head, sinking into the dirt, as if the spider crawled along and stayed a while to leave behind a symbol for her. She lifted a hand below the billowing silk, smiling as she caught a glimpse of an unveiled beauty. The relationship to a spider, breathing in the atmosphere like her and everything alive, letting air spread through its veins so its many joints could continue to curl and extend. 

        Along toward skeletal strings left by snap peas, she breathed so quietly, so slow with her footsteps. Through the nose, her lungs drew in moist air. She opened her mouth to let the air fall out again. Underneath her feet dewdrops splashed into her old foamy flip flops. Her pants were colored dark beneath the hips from brushing against outreached evergreen shrubs. Summer had passed along to make way for the rainbow season, when winds blow twirling rains onto land, hitting and absorbing into grinning leaves, open branches. She reached the peas and detangled their grasp, leaving itchy twine naked, looped around the bamboo frame left by the previous dwellers. She wondered where they had gone. Why they’d gone. Anyone who’s been pressed between shadowed concrete buildings and oppressive asphalt is bound to dream of standing just where she was. Why would anyone move away from such paradise? 

        An icy stem grew up her back and she trembled in fear of the unknown. Fear was a dangerous acquaintance, she realized only in its absence. She knew this house had belonged to a young couple before. When they toured the property lovely pictures leaned against a living room shelf, two blue towels hung in the bathroom. Had they decided to go and greet new landscapes? Or were they driven apart? Could they not love each other even on this land, so innocent and thriving? She crunched the old peas into a terracotta pot under the bench, deciding not to walk around to the compost bin. 

        Her body drew past remaining hot peppers, dangling sweetly from weakened stems, and approached three bursting chive plants. She picked a green stem from each, stood to bring in a final deep breath that seemed hurried, then came walking back to the front door glowing yellow in light. 

        While he prepared some eggs for the pan she sliced a few pieces of bread. “How’s your dad these days?” She wanted to speak to him like normal, like she wasn’t broken. She thought maybe things would be repaired if they could talk to one another casually. Remembering what ease and joy came with each early conversation caused her hips to sag.

        “Fine, I think.” He looked at her beside him and smiled warmly. She looked to him and saw his eyes, genuine, beckoning affection. She smiled too. Maybe he could sense her effort, maybe he knew she held something terrible inside, she was waiting for it to leave silently. “He’s biking.”

        “What. He’s biking? I can hardly imagine that.”

        “Well, yeah. Isn’t that funny.” He poured the eggs into the cast iron pan. Steam rose and a faint sizzling coursed through the room. “He said his old friend joined an outdoor group, and he started hiking and biking-”

        “Wait, Steve?” 

        “Yeah,” he said. She shook her head and smiled, reaching for another knife to chop the chives into small rings. “I know. I’ve never known him - either of them - to be into that kind of thing. And dad said Steve’s out there ‘finding himself.’ It seemed like he was kidding, but who knows.”

        “Well, you know why he made it up to be a joke. That kind of change is bound to open you up.”

        “Do I know?”

        “Well...” she hesitated. “He’s a man.” She looked to see his response.

        “Yeah? Do I do that?”

        “Sometimes you tend to trivialize. Men seem to sprinkle it around wherever they find space, whenever things get personal.” 

        “So you think it’s a guy thing.”

        “Everybody’s told to close themselves off to any little sense of belonging or trust in nature. More so with men I believe.” She knew he didn’t like this subject. She nudged him a little. “But look where we’ve ended up.”

        He looked at her, smiling. “A battleground for men”

        She cupped the chives in her hands and dropped them in the pan. “You should be able to make fun of things, though. Laughing about serious stuff is good-- It can be good. Actually it’s what I need to do more of.”

        They both fell silent. She looked at his hands, the spatula shifting and splitting groups of yellow eggs. It was mesmerizing. “Tell me more. About them.”

        “Oh.” He sighed. “So he asked dad if he wanted to go with him one day and dad didn’t have a bike so he borrowed Patti’s and they went out along the river. He loved it. He said he felt like he did when he was a kid. He doesn’t know why he ever stopped.”

        “It’s hard to imagine how it must feel. Something so beautiful getting through the cracks after so many years have gone by. But changes always come over you.” Only the eggs made noise. “Did he buy a bike?”

        “Oh yeah he did!” 

        Her mouth opened to a brief laugh, a release, and she reached over to turn off the stove. “Those look done.”

        “I’m just glad he found something to spend time with - enjoying. I was worried about him so long. I guess he found solace with the squirrels and the sky.”

        “Like us,” she said. He scraped the spatula against the side of the pan and set it on the counter and turned to hug her. She put her arms around him and gave him a kiss, inhaling his hope.

 

________

 

        The house stood dim and waving in the distance. He paced the living room screaming her name as she moved into the density. It seemed as though she was approaching the epicenter of chaos. Disorganization bubbled up, which was strange, so strange, to feel in this place of intention, all these buildings probing the sky, the noise of institutions carried through by a hundred thousand individuals. She knew its filth, the rage and sadness entrenching her like a muddy river, flowing over everyone, everybody with eyes closed to the air above them, feet stranded on concrete, cloaked above the connective soil. Yet she was pushed along. Oh, the city, the city is all wrong. No haven here. 

        Her body urged downward, knees bent and boney on the gray sidewalk where people passed with empty pockets and occupied eyes. Her fingernails scratched at the unmoving surface, expecting fixed pebbles to shift like sand. She felt cold everywhere, nerves frightful and frozen. Her woolen layers cracked to pieces like peas in autumn. She scrunched tight, naked, white, pierced by the rough ground. The people kept on walking, just moving this way and that, not forward, not increasing. In their tortures they created a contorted rhythm, eyes pitch black as they moved toward nothing, nothing at all. She wondered if she was blind as they were. She wondered if this judgment was a testament to her blindness. 

        A gray cat scurried through shifting legs like a bullet coming straight to her. And it did. She saw it in a blur jump on her back. It turned around to rest on her, chin lowered on the slope of her shoulder, tail patting her spine. Her skin recoiled in places where its icy paws pressed down, she felt its nose explore her ear, and suddenly heard a voice speak clear and cat-like. Go ahead. Sit here, you’re only you. It’s life, isn’t it? Haven’t you been here before? I know, I’ve seen you, by the river in the mud on the rocks behind the window asking the same questions. Claws broke into her skin. I can’t tell either. You could be on to something, taking it down too far to come back up. But I’m your creation and you are one of them, selfish suffering, senseless ruining. Shouldn’t you know what you’ve been up to all this time? Joining some infectious simulation that combusts here and now every time to be born into a painful space by another misunderstood mother. Don’t say you’ve been pushed. Something’s always behind the window. 

        Traffic increased and the voice dropped into sewer grates. The cat was gone and its claws stuck in her back like daggers. The unknown made her shiver, a tear across grassy land, revealing capsules of truth present but only perceivable in those unconscious realms of her mind. She was eager to find it, truth beneath language, like sitting under earth. His voice rang in her ears, through the streets, emanating above screeching cars and high-heeled footsteps. This was a trap. A city of fools, a container of writhing prisoners, and she was one of them. 

        The darkness of evening lowered into the streets, fog covered contrived greenery lining busy pathways. Buildings converged like closed tunnels and she was off, running fast along the sidewalks, turning down frightening alleyways, falling through holes in the ground, grasped and pulled by delusional arms until she was so covered in darkness and blood her eyes could not see and her ears no longer sensed his calling. The darkness was unfamiliar and the blood was ancient. She felt her body compress between bloated forms, her limbs contracting, her head rolling inward so her consciousness would be stuck inside a small box alongside other small boxes. When all the movement stopped there was no sound either. There were no scents, the city was formless. Darkness surrounded her, and she was still. 

        For a long time she existed in a black space without interaction. Maybe she didn’t exist at all, but it came back into her, those waves of feeling, and she could sense her figure again amidst a network of bodies. She was being pushed, or falling maybe, down, down, deep through doorways, lost without hope to return. All she could do was scream. This was a mistake. She wanted him, and all the pain and pressure on her body pinched into her head to orbit this thought. She missed his body close and his calm voice and his warm hands over hers. She was fragile. From deep inside a noise arose, violent and vibrating.

        Then she awoke, tears streaming down from heavy eyes, arms tied around him. He didn’t speak while her heart rate slowed. He had an arm around her and the other hand rested over her belly. Her head lifted to look through the window where foliage shuddered in the blue breeze. The air in the bedroom felt nice and circulated and her body filled with lightness in each breath. His fingers pushed through tangled hair and she dropped her forehead on his chest, eyes shut, palms placed on his cross-legged knees. He sat in the dark massaging her head silently as she tried to remember the words that had been whispered in her dreaming ear.

        In the dark they lay close together, she slept soundly into late morning while he watched the lighting change on the walls. By the time she awoke the room was basking in sunshine. When her eyes opened she could see down to her feet, the profiles of her toes next to his, laying there defenseless underneath the covers. On top of them an amber-toned quilt spread over the sides of the bed, and in the light it looked like melted gold. She shifted a little to reach her arm around his waist, feeling his gentle gaze. She was looking down at the quilt, thinking their bodies looked like one body, all covered with that drapey liquid. 

 

________

 

        Days continued to darken and mornings when sunlight shone brightly through the windows grew scarce. She had begun to shut out the light as well. For a brief period after that night she saw her life as a full flower. Time slowed, color could be found anywhere. She let go of pessimism, even reached beyond optimism, awakening to a world where reason is one with love, where happiness can only intensify with experience. She let time come toward her. It was a joy to stand in the warm house looking through the windows at windblown plants and scuttering animals. In his face she saw mystery and she saw love. They knew one another precisely, a beautiful, powerful secret formed between them, a settlement, acceptance. Their closeness granted an understanding of life as the cyclical cold guided nature’s last flitting endeavor before winding down for the winter. She knew the truth of everything, knew she was only required to open her mind and let it come in. Then she saw it everywhere, down the food chain, up the mountains, deep in the forest. She saw her life as a series of relationships, she saw struggle and satisfaction, she felt full and light. When she was with him, she knew love. 

        Eventually the harmony inside dissolved, weakening as skepticism seized her choices. She didn’t feel angry. It was like a trail, one she felt determined to continue on. Those good times were audible, they were barely visible behind her shoulder, yet untouchable. She paid little attention to the inner workings of the world within and beyond the house, consumed by an immense guilt for staying put, succumbing to a life such as this. She was displeased with his words, blind to his attentiveness. Abstractions of the dream rose up from somewhere untraceable once in a while, failing to pull her back into perfect rhythm. One cloudy Saturday morning awoke to her fists banging against glass in the living room. By the time he walked out of the bedroom, half asleep, her body had shrunk down on the ground, head hung below her knees, arms tucked in. Muffled sobs seemed to cast shadows over the whole room. 

        She didn’t notice him until she heard his breath humming and he kneeled close, a hand weighing on her back. The sobbing lessened and her body felt frozen. He dropped on to his bottom with crossed legs, his arm sweeping across her back. “I don’t know what’s happening to you. I want to help you.” His voice was warm and concerned. “I can feel a distance between us. It feels like you are isolating yourself.” Silence. “Nothing’s the same. And I don’t know what I can do. I need you to let me help you. Please.”

        For a minute she sat pressing fingers against her skull, hiding her eyes from him. Should I go should I go should I go should I go. Her heart was beating fast, and she hoped he couldn’t feel it. A breath drew in and she held it in her lungs until she couldn’t any longer. Should I go? Her hands cascaded off her face, landing in her lap. 

        “I think this is the end.” She looked right at him and saw his concern sink deep into helplessness. His head hung down. He didn’t have anything to say.

        “The world is out there.” 

        “There’s a world in here.” He looked up to her with eyes like shining marbles and more tears fell out of her head.

        She was silent for a while, mouth closed, choking on regret, searching for remission. 

        “I don’t want you to keep dwelling on what could be. Look what we have right now. Look what we’ve made together here. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you want it and nothing else?” His voice trembled through each syllable. “I can see the moment things change. I know it in your stillness, when your body is sloped. It’s this restraint, like a darkness, and you aren’t with me. I wish you were with me.”

        He covered his face and shook out a sigh. The rising sun struck through the clouds, projecting a bleak light into the room. She sat with her neck stretched upward to look through the window. In her mind an awful darkness covered her senses. No thought could manifest other than a beat of I should go I should go I should go I should go. At the moment his sentiment and emotions did not make any sense to her. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to leave, though she still felt his bark climbing through her fingers, growing all the time and forcing her to hold still. 

        Outside a spider web hung between branches of a magnolia tree. There it was, a little striped creature attached at the spiral’s center, waiting to survive. She couldn’t remember what had seemed so special about a spider’s web that day some time ago. She didn’t remember and she moved on, looking vaguely across the grass and up into the trees. He was looking to, from her eyes to the tree, her eyes to the branches, her eyes to the sky. He laid his back on the floor and shut his eyes. She didn’t look at him, didn’t see his furrowed brow and his attempts to close his mouth and calm himself, but instead stood and walked away into bed.

        All day long, she curled under layers of blankets, and he let her. Underneath the covers she put her arms around herself and stared into the closet until falling asleep. She’d left the door cracked open enough for him to look at her inside, which he did often. In the afternoon he walked outside with a pitchfork to pick up the remaining leaves piled in the yard. She saw him through the bedroom window twice, passing over the back porch with their leaf bins. He looked strangely confident, deliberate and sure of his movements. She closed her eyes again to the world and slept.

        In the evening he made dinner enough for them both, leaving her food on the counter where it would remain untouched. He ate and read a book and went out for a walk in the trees. He found it impossible to unwind in the woods and turned back, suddenly hit by anxiety. Maybe she needed him there with her. When he returned the house was still dark and quiet, she was still laying under covers. 

        She awoke to the sound of the shower turning on, and turned her aching body on its opposite side. The air felt warm, he must have reached in and turned the heater on. She felt moisture on her palms and her legs were itchy. She pushed the blankets down and sat up, trying to focus. The room looked dim and blurry, objects seemed bulbous. The pulsing was gone from her head, the complexities of her mind returned. She got up to walk over to the wall and turn off the heater. When she turned back she saw him lying there asleep, curled at the edge of the bed facing away from her. He looked so tiny and dark on top of the quilt, like a clump of dust. She couldn’t move, struck with sorrow flooding through her veins. The bed was empty again after she blinked.

        The next time her eyes opened, she saw him sleeping beside her and reached an arm under the covers to touch his hand. It was firm and real, so she pulled away again. Rain fell outside all night while she lay awake looking with despondency at his blue and black profile. A few hours must have passed before she got up, took her clothes off and stacked them in the hamper basket, replacing them with heavy pants and a sweater. She walked out of the bedroom and put her coat on while he slept.

        The wind blew harsh rains from the clouds, blowing them into the distance by early morning. He awoke to a delightful golden light pouring through the window, studying its beauty before he turned to face her in bed. His neck perked up and he blinked quickly, realizing her absence. Ignoring the light he rose violently from bed, turning around the frame to get out the door. He looked over the house. The kitchen, the bathroom, living room, studio, closet. Then he walked frantically outside, finding empty seats, weedy pathways, closed gates, no signs. It took a couple hours and six splinters in his feet for him to understand the search was useless. She had already ventured deep into the abyss.