WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU WATCH STAR TREK

It’s quite boring. But when we first got together I watched it with you. I asked too many questions. You got annoyed. So I stopped. I felt sorry for the Klingons. I didn’t like Captain Kirk. Next Generation was a little better. Picard seemed nice. Smart. But eventually I had enough and stopped watching it with you. The early days of wanting to be together every single minute were waning. We moved from our tiny apartment to a house and I could be in another room without you. Although I did miss being on the futon with you and laying my head in your lap.

The day after you died our son watched Star Trek. I thought it was odd because he never had before. The episode was about an invisible spaceship entity that wanted to die. The crew of the Enterprise had to give up trying to save it.

The episode was titled “The Tin Man.” Just like the Halloween costume you wore the year we all dressed up as characters from The Wizard of Oz. Except you didn’t want to wear a costume so you just wore a baseball hat that I had embroidered that said Tin Man.

And I wasn’t sure what that meant. I had questions. But you weren’t there.

 

LUCKY CHARMS

It was not the day I spilled nail polish remover down the front of my shirt. My mother called poison control. I was turning purple. She ran me under cold water. Years later my father would say the reason I am so stupid is from inhaling toxic fumes. It was not the day that my father started a fire in the fireplace. It was August. I was watching The Sound of Music on the television but not paying attention. My mother was begging him to put it out.

It was the day I ate all of the marshmallows from the box of Lucky Charms. It was the day that my parents asked me to go on a walk. I thought that they were going to tell me they were having another baby. My father said he was leaving. It had nothing to do with me. I didn’t cry. I kicked at rocks and watched them bounce off the dirt road into the woods. As he was pulling out of the driveway I realized he had my bike in the back of his white van. I tried to chase after him yelling, “WAIT!”  He probably saw me running after him. He probably thought I was crying for him. But he didn’t stop. It was the day that I ran down the driveway and didn’t stop running all the way down to the water. I jumped in and I started swimming. I was wearing my clothes. Shorts and a tee shirt. The shirt was green and had a lion on it. I thought I could hear my mother yelling for me to come back but I didn’t. I swam farther and farther away. I wasn’t scared to swim out past the buoy. I was going to swim all the way across to Blueberry Island. But I knew I wasn’t going to make it. My arms were getting tired. I was afraid of the boats coming through. I turned and swam back. But not because my mother was yelling for me. She didn’t call my name. I walked up the steps to the cottage. Dripping wet through the porch, into the kitchen. My mother was sitting at the table smoking. “That was very dangerous,” she said. “You’re lucky you didn’t drown.”  I sat down at the small kitchen table.

“It’s going to be ok,” she said.

“He took my fucking bike!” I yelled.

“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” she whispered and got up from the table. She poured me a bowl of cereal without the marshmallows and said something about having breakfast for dinner and wasn’t that fun.

 

SLEEP

I’m in bed but I can’t sleep. The cottage smells like wet wood and mothballs and bug spray. The bed is hard. It’s hot. It’s too light outside. I’m staring up at the ceiling. I watch a spider wrap a blackfly in invisible thread. I hear crickets chirping. Owls hooting. Tree frogs squawking. The black and white television downstairs. Voices. Trying to whisper but yelling. Hissing.

I hear my father. He’s back. I can’t hear what he is saying. The noises outside are too loud. I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Coming for me. My heart pounding. I shut my eyes. I make myself lie very still. I repeat over and over silently in my head. I am asleep. I am asleep. I am asleep. I am asleep.

I wake to the sound of the screen door slamming. Twice. The sound of my mother screaming as she runs through the woods. I hear her feet going over the ground. I hear branches breaking as she tears through the woods to the neighbors. I hear someone.

Running after her. More branches breaking. The sound of the leaves rustling. I hear my father yell her name. I wake to the commotion of the neighbors coming out of their cottage. I wake to nothing. The sound of crickets. The sounds of owls. I am alone. I am not scared. I do not move. I am paralyzed. I am not afraid. I see the red flashes of the ambulance. There is no siren. I am awake, staring at the knots on the pine paneling, afraid that something is going to crawl out of one and get me and wishing that something would.

 

LA RANA

A and I were in the woods. We had just argued again about how I got engaged while we were broken up. I have no explanation when he says again, “I just don’t understand.” I say again, “I don’t either.” To distract him I suggest we look for frogs in the pond. We can hear them but can’t see them.

I have just returned from Arizona and am leaving him again for another week to go on vacation with my daughter to repair, to try to repair, my relationship with her. The child who loved me so much now has so much anger toward me because I broke off the engagement. I cannot tell her why. I can hardly tell anyone why. She thinks it’s because of A. Partly that is true. I never stopped loving him. Or missing him. Wishing I could fall asleep in his arms. I would wake up reaching for him in the night and wake up crying in the morning to the same realization that he was not there. And I was in bed with a stranger. Engaged to a stranger.

That night in bed A asks me if I think Arizona helped. I think we just have to wait and see is what I think. But I say yes. I think so. I don’t feel so depressed. That is true. But I still feel so tired all the time. All I really want to do is sleep. I know it’s not a successful coping mechanism. All the things are still there when I wake up and the longer I sleep the bigger and messier all the things get. But now when I wake up A is there. And right now that’s enough. I know because as I lie here in bed he is sitting out in the kitchen watching a video of frogs making that sound frogs make.