By: A. G.
I’m nervous. Like the first time
on a mic, I’m nervous. I’m nervous, because I know I’m going to cry.
Wellbutrin works wonders for her ADHD, but she calls me well Gibson,
because I make her happy. I make her happy. Is there anything left to do
in this life? I don’t think so, except maybe adopt a fourth dog, which
we both know she will find, because I pull over when I see a stray, but
she pulls over, learns parkour, scales a building and pole vaults
between rooftops, returning with another furry bundle, freckling her in
fleas.
She also follows me everywhere I go. I don’t mind that it’s only to
put lids on everything, I don’t. What can I say? I’m an open person. So
is she. She doesn’t just see people at their best. She sees people at
the best they haven’t been yet, which is why she loved me long before I
loved myself. Thank goodness, I figured that out. Beating yourself up is
never a fair fight. Those gloves fit no one right, and she always
deserved the me who didn’t have to squint through bruised eyes to see
her clearly. And how could I not want to see her clearly as she pole
dances on the tractor, mows our lawn in a bikini, rolls out a red carpet
to escort the mice back to the pastor, teaches spiders how to weave
their webs outside. And the ants… Okay, the ants she slaughters with
every weapon she can find, but I forgive her, because she forgives
everyone so easily.
Watching her do it is like watching paint dry. There’s nothing to
see. Everything is just more colorful after. This morning while I was
trying to figure out what kind of fish everyone in our family would be, I
asked her what she would be, and she said very seriously, “Hold up, let
me Google the sexiest fish. Oh wait, the most beautiful fish. Oh wait,
there’s an angel fish. I am the angel fish.” I know there are more fish
in the sea, very beautiful ones, but she’s a catch I will never throw
back, because there is no one like her anywhere. She minds her own
business, changes her mind as often as she needs to, and she never, ever
lies, which irritates me, because she also edits my poems. Can’t keep
the look off her face when I use adverbs. How could I not write the word
beautifully while she’s sitting beside me, but beautifully doesn’t bug
her nearly as much as honestly, which I honestly begin half of my
sentences with, and she’s worried that suggests the other half of what I
say is a lie.
But here’s what I figured out today, I am a liar. I lie all the time.
The other day I said, we will all have to say goodbye sometime. That’s
not true. Saul Williams was right when he said, “Only believers in death
will die.” I don’t believe anything could take me away from her, nor
would I want it to, but it wasn’t always like this. There were many
months we were more flammable than Instagramable, but we were creative
about it. Spent an entire summer arguing via badminton so we could drive
the birdie of blame at each other’s skulls. I was going to leave that
out of this, but this isn’t only for us.
It’s for everyone we can convince to not wait for a tragedy to stop
calling it zero, zero when it could so easily be called love, serving
love. I had no idea how much would change, when all that mattered,
became all that mattered. These days, our biggest arguments happen on
our daily walks near the lake. I always want to walk back the same way,
which she doesn’t enjoy. “I like to circle”, she says. We can’t agree,
because I want to do it all again. See it from another angle. The back
of the coffee line where she didn’t know me, but told me I was ordering
the wrong drink, the back of my hand where I first wrote her name so I
could remember her birthday when we were still friends, the back of her
arms where she tattooed the longitude and latitude of where we first
danced, the birds flying backwards back to the cold, just like her
racing home from her lunch in the sun when I called to tell her what the
doctor had spotted on the cat scan.
When I called cancer, the big C, she is the only one who knows I mean
the big ocean where we met our own Titanic and didn’t sink. She even
managed to convince me it was a good idea for us to dress up as Jack and
Rose on Halloween, though my baldness was in no position to pass up an
opportunity to wear a wig. I was a bit nervous to play the part of the
guy who dies. But I wasn’t really Jack, I was Rose. And her heart was
the door that opened so wide, it tore off its hinges and kept me afloat,
even as I woke up from surgery and asked her what they found. Anyone
who thinks poetry is frivolous, has never needed someone to tell them
something unspeakably hard, beautifully.
My guardian angel, my guardian
angel fish, you will never not be swimming beside me. We will never not
be swimming beside each other, just like I will never be done writing
this very long love poem for which this is only the prologue, baby.
I’ve
barely begun.
https://andreagibson.substack.com/p/the-big-see
TINCTURE BY ANDREA GIBSON
Imagine, when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold. Misses the throat closing shy reading out loud on the first day of school. Imagine the soul misses the stubbed toe, the loose tooth, the funny bone. The soul still asks, Why does the funny bone do that? It's just weird. Imagine the soul misses the thirsty garden cheeks watered by grief. Misses how the body could sleep through a dream. What else can sleep through a dream? What else can laugh? What else can wrinkle the smile's autograph? Imagine the soul misses each falling eyelash waiting to be a wish. Misses the wrist screaming away the blade. The soul misses the lisp, the stutter, the limp. The soul misses the holy bruise blue from that army of blood rushing to the wound's side.
When a human dies, the soul searches the universe for something blushing, something shaking in the cold, something that scars, sweeps the universe for patience worn thin, the last nerve fighting for its life, the voice box aching to be heard. The soul misses the way the body would hold another body and not be two bodies but one pleading god doubled in grace. The soul misses how the mind told the body, You have fallen from grace. And the body said, Erase every scripture that doesn't have a pulse. There isn't a single page in the bible that can wince, that can clumsy, that can freckle, that can hunger. Imagine the soul misses hunger, emptiness, rage, the fist that was never taught to curl-curled, the teeth that were never taught to clench-clenched, the body that was never taught to make love-made love like a hungry ghost digging its way out of the grave. The soul misses the unforever of old age, the skin that no longer fits. The soul misses every single day the body was sick, the now it forced, the here it built from the fever. Fever is how the body prays, how it burns and begs for another average day. The soul misses the legs creaking up the Stairs, misses the fear that climbed up the vocal cords to curse the Wheelchair. The soul misses what the body could not let go-what ese could hold on that tightly to everything? What else could see hear the chain of a swing set and fall to its knees? What else could touch a screen door and taste lemonade? What else could come back from a war and not come back? But still try to live? Still try to lullaby? When a human dies the soul moves through the universe trying to describe how a body trembles when it's lost, softens when it's safe, how a wound would heal given nothing but time. Do you understand?
Nothing in space can imagine it. No comet, no nebula, no ray of light can fathom the landscape of awe, the heat of shame. The fingertips pulling the first gray hair and throwing it away. I can't imagine it, the stars say. Tell us again about goosebumps. Tell us again about pain.
