Almost Something Alive

Jenny Morris

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In my head there’s static. A room of whining mosquitoes. I’ve been told to rest, but resting is for runners. I don’t know if there is a right way to heal, but I hate when people tell me what to do.

On the subway, I see the blackness of the tunnel walls – a stark contrast to the train’s fluorescent body. The doors jolt open. The car is almost empty, but a man walks on and sits next to me. His arm brushes against mine. I get up and walk to the other end of the train. I wonder if he is going to follow me. I like to be seen, but not too much.

A grape rolls across the floor. The doors open again – a rush of canvas, rubber and leather in the aching yellow light. Sometimes I feel like that grape. The grape screaming: All I wanted was to be touched! And to be touched I had to die!

I look back up to see a father with his son wriggling in his lap.

There is nothing to see out there, the father says. The tunnel is too dark.

But I can see in the dark, says the boy. I got night goggles.

I watch the boy pull out a pair of blue tinted swimming goggles from his tiny bag. He pulls them over his head, his brown hair sticking up through the straps, and points out the window.

I see the moon jellies. They’re all out here floating around.

Back home is a place where you are not. No arms wrapped around me. No breath on my neck. I look at myself in the hallway mirror. I had no trouble looking at myself when I belonged to someone else. Now there is an invasiveness. It’s an eye piercing my eye. Fuck my eyes. And then, guilt. In a glimmer, I see myself looking at the boy, wanting to try on his special goggles. I could have seen you then, but I was afraid.

The next time you visit, it’s in my dreams. You, a tiny speck of light, watch from the darkness as I cut out my tongue to tell you that I think I’m healing. A silent retreat. Or maybe, I’m offering myself to you to see if you will take it. You, a comet, turn into a horrid and pure ball of light that’s stopped still in the darkness. You look at me and it hurts to look back. Since I have no tongue, I ask you telepathically, are you doing OK? You turn such a blinding blue that I have to look away.

I wake up to the same darkness of the dream, only this time there is no comet light; I am alone. I don’t expect to fall back asleep, so I slump my computer onto my chest and type the word “light” into the search bar. A lamp with two bulbs. The northern lights. Strands of hair. A cracked hole in the ceiling. A party. A quiet room with a chair. The Pantone Process Black. A glowing blue question mark.

I delete four letters from my search, until I’m left only with the letter L. I type a-t-e-n-t. A bound book. A woman tied to a chair. Red shoes and nothing else.

I delete the 5 letters and type a-u-g-h. A goose wearing a bowler hat. A flying saucer. A seal wearing glasses and a poster that reads I went to art school and all I got was this fucking attitude.

I erase it all and type in the word “love.” A postcard that reads break my heart, i’ll break your face. A sunlit photo of a woman jumping into the arms of a man. A mug that says I love you like I love my coffee. First in the morning or last at night. A knife. A bunch of matches with hearts on the end. A stock photo of a starry night. A tweet that reads When life gives you lemons, say thank you. A gift is a gift.

I sigh and dim the light on the computer. In the absence of the glow, the room feels calmer. I think of the sea, of spit reversing in one’s mouth, of roots pulled back into the ground, of a cow chewing its cud. I want to ask you if you are a river or the sea – expansive beyond lines of sight or local and hovering nearby. If you are a river, you would be one of those underwater canyons – a place where the impossible becomes possible. You made everyone around you believe and then pulled the final trick. You left with an Irish goodbye – a move only the cool kids pull. All of the darkness below and above you, all of the lightness too tender to bear.

Out of bed, I slide open the back door, facing the ocean. The darkness sparkles and flakes like a sponge out of water and for a few moments it is almost something alive, writhing like a pregnant animal. In the scent of salty rust and wet sand, I wonder if death is just a tricked out, double sided mirror – a plunge into the deepest parts, emerging in a world of blazing light.

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David Lynch writes, Don’t fight the darkness. Don’t even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes.

E says she is getting panic attacks often. The symptoms are strange: numbness in the right leg and upper left shoulder, tingling sensations, nausea, vomiting, trouble sleeping, back pain. She says, “I want to kill myself. Nobody knows what’s going on with me.”

A says, “What you need to say is not always what the other needs to hear.” Sometimes, there are no words.

We find out later it is Epstein-Barr. I am relieved there is an explanation. I tell her about the David Lynch book. Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.

T calls me and says she mapped out her suicide 7 months ago. She’s sorry she didn’t call. I tell her I’m happy she is calling now. “You have four children, you are busy.” She says she told her husband about the plan. “What did he say?” She says he threatened to kill himself too.

I talk to my therapist. I seek help from spiritual counselors. I check in on her multiple times a week. I send her a journal, a candle, a notepad for a drawing a day. I tell her I love her.

H takes me to a ballet for my birthday. I ask, “Why do so many ballets end in people dancing themselves to death?” He says he never noticed.

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I like the way you noticed: a gift is a gift. As I write this, my computer autocorrects “notice” to “noticed”; its past form, as if the machine itself has a human heart in the denial stage of grieving. You listened to the song of the numb and whistled back a tune. One tin cup on the other end of the line. One tin cup on the other end of hundreds. I search for you in a familiar and unwelcome space, between despair and hope, and find a mirror pointed at myself. You’re there in the background of my reflection holding a whiteboard. On it, are the words Mors Tua Vita Mea, Your Death My Life. You smile and bow. You walk away.