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I can’t recall the precise moment of inspiration that spawned this poem, but it’s a merger of two unsettling notions taken to terrible extremes. The first is the helplessness experienced while vomiting and the awful thought I’ve had in mid-spew: “What happens if this heaving doesn’t stop?” Second, the realization while browsing treasures at estate sales: “One day, the evidence of my life, too, will be laid out on display, labelled and bargain-priced.”
Cinda begins the worst afternoon of her life by hiding in a closet. It’s spring break of her senior year of high school, and she’s rented a cabin with four friends using money she saved from her job at the bookstore, and it all feels terribly grown-up: the long drive into the mountains in the passenger seat of her boyfriend Travis’s car; the box of condoms Paulina not-so-secretly tucked in the glove box; the case of cheap beer and freezer bag of weed that Wally stowed in the trunk; the excursions and activities that Maeve carefully planned.
As for the process of writing the piece—this was one of the pieces I wrote with fellow writers in a weekly writing session where someone gives a prompt and we each take an hour to create something. I have a fascination with the bubonic plague and fairy tales so I wanted to combine those elements. I got the idea of burying someone by a tree from “The Juniper Tree” story. My medical profession also helped in the making of this poem—since I’m a surgeon, I can actually say I’ve seen a couple of human hearts that really resemble fruit.
I hold the crayon to the mirror, ready to swipe it across my reflection’s neck just as my husband, Tomas, instructed. Make a quick horizontal line, then break the crayon against the glass. Snap it like you would your reflection’s neck. I’ve chosen the shade closest to my skin tone because it feels fitting for the occasion, the brown that I’d had to explain to our kindergartener was not “the skin color” crayon. Not everyone has skin as dark as ours, and some have darker. I imagine similar conversations in other households, about other crayons.
This story started life just over nine years ago—October 30, 2013, to be exact—as an assignment in an online workshop taught by Craig Clevenger. We’d been focusing on escalation of events and status play between characters, so the jockeying that surrounds gendered expectations, especially involving sex, seemed like a good place to start. Beyond that, I’ve always found carnivals unsettling because of their atmosphere of blatant disguise, so the theme and setting fit hand and glove for horror.
She comes early, forcing you to reschedule meetings from the car as Alan drives, white-knuckled. You don’t mind—sending contract notes while in labor is the sort of story the partners will tell for years. Delivery is an athletic event, but you understand those. You ran cross-country in college, before law school took over. You understand pain, how to bear down and force your body into submission. And then it’s over. They put her in your arms, swaddled and squalling, and she is exactly as you imagined.
It’s difficult to make sense of death. Intellectually we understand it, but emotionally there is uncertainty and fear and grief and anger. This essay was an attempt to process those feelings. Since writing this essay, we lost two more cats, one to old age, the other to lymphoma. Both were euthanized because that’s how you show mercy to animals in pain. One of them suffered an allergic reaction to the sedative and in his final moments he was dizzy and vomiting, yet the other nestled in his cat bed and drifted off. Two more deaths, two more dead who continue breathing.
The day her mother brought Mr. Nelson home, Martha faded into the wallpaper. It seemed the safest thing to do. Martha had never met Mr. Nelson, but she had met the others, and she knew what they could do to her. Had done to her. And her mother. It was possible that this one was different, but Martha did not want to take that chance. “Martha?” called out her mother. She was clinging to Mr. Nelson’s arm, Martha saw, and swaying a little. Just as she had with the others. “Martha?”
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s run in the family—both paternal grandparents had it, now my father, and it often feels like a neurological heirloom waiting for me. I wrote this poem after accompanying my father for his monthly Parkinson’s checkup and wanted to convey how surreal a doctor’s diagnosis can feel when it’s essentially telling you your body will eventually feel like a stranger.
The base of my skull buzzes as I pick up some bleach and a new scouring pad from the market. I’ve been away from my house for too long. When I get back, I must remember to clean the oven, clean the stovetop, clean the sink. In the checkout queue, I drop my basket onto the counter, and then I see her again. The new girl. So many have come and gone through the years that I barely remember them. Their polite gazes always slip off of me when I come through their checkouts.
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