Photo by Kevin Lehtla on Unsplash
Plants fish bed plants fish bed
Some people think that all thoughts are just thoughts, harmless iridescent bubbles floating around in your head waiting to be popped. But the truth is that some thoughts are so bad that they aren’t even thoughts at all. They’re urges. Bacteria. Blades. Something not from you but inside you. An invasion. And they take up space where the good thoughts could be.
This is one of my tricks to make the good thoughts take up so much space in my head that there isn’t room for anything else—plants fish bed plants fish bed—lists of things that need to be done. On my morning walk with my dog, I feel useful and full or purpose as I repeat the list over and over. I picture accomplishing the list—the water pooling in the potted dirt, sprinkles of food in the bowl stuck on surface tension, pulling the blue blanket tight. It is a certain kind of beauty, simple and tidy.
Then my dog is tangled in his leash and as I bend down to free him, I lose track of myself. The blanket tight, the white blanket tight, the white blanket up to her chin. I slept next to her for three weeks while she died, always the white blanket up to her chin. I thought old would look wise, I thought death’s door would have forgiveness for the welcome mat, but her face was blank paper scribbled with sagging lines, like a drawing you’d messed up and wanted to throw away. She’d been an intense mother in every way, an ever blazing fire, holding me down with tickling kisses one day then slapping me across the face the next. Everything had to be in order, everything spotless. Where is the remote. Where is my dress. Where are your shoes. They were never questions but accusations delivered through gritted teeth. You missed a spot. You’re doing this to me on purpose. Your filth. Then she was a child in an ancient woman’s body in a hospital bed staring out the window at the reeds still snow-covered in March and I was a child in a young woman’s body staring at her. Her tongue and hands, those old weapons, now frozen, all parts of her nearly extinguished, I could have felt peaceful or forgiving or vengeful but instead I felt sorry, terribly sorry, an apology blooming in my chest like a bouquet of knives. I told her I was sorry that I could never get her out of my head. That I’d been weak. That I had blamed her for too much. She said she was sorry, she whispered it as loud as she could, but everything about her was caving in—her voice, her face, her whole being was turning inward like a sick magic trick. Poof. She’d be gone any second now. Her face her face her face. Poof. The leash slipped from my grip and off he went running.
I called his name but he didn’t stop. A natural runner, it was in his blood not to. There were cars everywhere eager to smash his little body into the asphalt. The bad thoughts were taking over. Her face. The cars. The reeds. There would be blood. On my hands.
Then someone caught hold of his leash and I fell to the ground at their feet sobbing. Not a normal small cry. A writhing and clutching bellow coming from a grown woman on the sidewalk, my skirt splayed around me like a banshee vortex, black with white dots. A thought cruelly scolded me for acting out (this pathetic commotion) and I sobbed over it. Louder louder louder.
Isabelle Correa is a teacher in Vietnam. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in Third Point Press, Word Riot, The Molotov Cocktail, Literary Orphans, and elsewhere. She lives for a good chat. Find her on Twitter @IsabelleJCorrea.