There is a World Where I Come Home to You

I died last night. I’m not sure how, they didn’t tell me. I guess that’s how it always is,

who would have thought that? I always assumed that when you died, you felt a prick like a

needle to the finger, some lost sharp feeling you haven't felt since childhood–The aching tendon

of a wiggling tooth, the taste of copper and blood and then, a snap. That after you floated up right

out of your snuggly bed and into the even snugglier clouds and then a large, handsome man with

a warm smile told you in a kind and reaffirming way what happened to you and why you died.

But that isn’t what happened, they didn't tell me at all.

When I died it was a Tuesday. It was May and the lake had been refilled a week before

for summer and it was all shiny and new. When I died I was wearing a very uncomfortable bra,

the wire poking into my ribs like little fingers, and all I wanted was to take it off. When I died I

was alone, I think. Again, they did not tell me. They said it was not important how I died, it only

mattered how I had lived. I said that was too cheesy to be true and they said no such thing.

Maybe whatever happened to me was too horrifying and they didn't want me to remember, or

maybe it was just embarrassing. Maybe when I was trying to take off that tight bra, I slipped on

my dirty laundry on the floor and banged my head on the nightstand. Maybe I was hunched in a

circle, bleeding from my head onto bright linoleum floors. Yes, maybe it is best that I don’t

remember how I died.

****

Earlier this week when I was still me and the Earth was still my Earth, it was fluffy and

full of life outside. I was in Maine and it was spring and it was the first time I noticed Spring, the

first time I ever even witnessed it at all–The grey and brown grass turn to green and a bright blue

sky. And it happened so quickly, overnight it seemed, like it was always going to happen, like it

happened with no effort. Because it was always going to happen, because it was no effort at all.

I sat on a bench next to a baseball field with a spiraled orange peel and a piece of cheese.

I ate with my hands, fingers curled inwards like a mouse, and the boys cursed when they swung

their bats without hitting the ball. I thought that I would miss it there. I thought that I loved you.

But now, I can’t remember anything but the feeling and your touch, like a shooting star, and now

I know for certain that I do. Spring did not feel the way I imagined it to. My mom always told

me it would feel humid and heavy. Wet and grey, and it did sometimes. But most of the time it

was glorious. It was all soft weaving grass and a shining clear pond. At night, the sky was purple

and red. The clouds were thick and weighty, full of something. And you, who I can not quite

remember physically now, next to me always like a dot on a map. You were not so different than

me but at the same time full of all the boyish things. The things that the girls search for with their

dirty fingernails in the mud and weeds but never quite catch, only ever finding earthworms and

absolutely no secrets. It will never be like this again, I know.

In my youth there was a red door that led to a yard, much bigger than I know it to be now,

back then it was large and full of Christmas lights that seemed to never leave. In my dreams I

still live there, in my dreams I wake up to a green carpet that I picked out to look like grass

because I never did want to leave that garden and I don't know you at all. I know now that in this

life I have always known you. I know now that there is another universe where we met at five

years old as neighbors in Bradenton, Florida on a street where every house looks the same and I

knew the inside of your room like I now know the sound of your laugh. We met at the swing set

and when I went home that night for dinner I told my mom that I was married, you gave me a

flower stem ring. There is another life where we were children in Massachusetts, our street is

lazy and full of holes. The ice cream man lives at the end of the driveway and summers are hazy

and ever present and one day I was crying on the curb with a bleeding knee and roller skates, and

you being you, gave me your sock right off your foot. You thought it would stop the bleeding and

I knew right then at eight that I loved you the way a mother loves a father. And, still, there is

another where we met at twenty-five, two Target cashiers in Kansas City. We would eat lunch on

our breaks in your old Prius and I would only come to work to see you and you would always

wear the same red shirt. All I know is that in all of these lives we meet, somewhere, somehow.

And I love you.

In Maine I had this dream where you break my heart. You hold a big pitcher of beer in

front of you, bigger than your whole torso, you hold it with two stretching hands in front of you

like a big fair teddy bear prize and none of it quite makes sense because it is a dream and dreams

never do but you say something to me that I can’t quite remember. It is too quick, like a bullet

grazing the top of my head. I say nothing, words have always escaped me in the worst of times

and I wake up in a room I do not recognize knowing that some things are not meant to last. But I

know that’s not true this time. And I always know when it’s the end, like a cat before death.

I always thought that life ends like a flame goes out. All at once and then the smoke fills

the room and you can’t breathe. But it isn’t like that here. It is great and wide and it feels like the

swell before a storm. The kind of storm where the clouds are black and purple and the whole

world feels more ancient and full of meaning. Here you are all around me and yet at the same

time you are so big that I can not even see you. On Earth I was always scared. I took my first

breath and screamed at the sight of my life laid out before me. It lay in front of me like an

endless stretch of highway. I knew for a long time that God hides in every bush and tree and

sometimes I would get a glimpse, but most of the time a leaf was just a leaf. I wanted all the

worldly girl things. I wanted to grow my hair to my hips and then cut it all at once to my ears. I

wanted to paint my face red and white and cream. I wanted to cry at the old marble statues in

Florence and drink coffee in old, beaten down coffee shops in Paris. I saw myself much older, in

Budapest in the baths surrounded by old sagging men or in Rome, crushed underneath the

looming swell of the Vatican and thought that everywhere I went I would never find what I was

looking for. The air was always too heavy when I was alive but here I woke up and took my first

breath and felt nothing. Here my mind lives outside of me, it is filled with wildflowers and

overgrown grass and I walk within it with the dirty bare soles of my feet and feel the warmth of a

rubber tire swing on my thighs. Wind blows and I remember what it feels like to have no pain.

The ache of spring turns to summer so quickly and I see behind it the image of a reality I lived

but can’t remember. Of dirty converse, size six, they step on leaves and asphalt now warm with

the promise of June. I step back inside, take off my shoes, leave them by the door next to yours.

There is a world where I come home to you.