I've spent the mornings collecting sticks and scooping ash out of the
fire. Evisceration can leave one feeling hollow, so you have to pack
the body. Lash the bones with sticks, stuff the torso with ash and
leaves and whatever is lying about; yesterday's coffee, the hair off the
brush, the cat collars, the dog-chewed mail. The goal is rigidity,
enough for a day.
I’m full of flashes of disparate
sentences. Months of which I can't place from where or when, only a face
and the uncertainty of whether it was a dream. And then there’s a
million more that I’ll never remember, not even in a flash. I used to
remember everything.
Where did I leave my horse? Johnny
Cash and me were just riding through the desert. We hung our hearts on a
cactus to dry, and we went hunting. Johnny killed a jack rabbit, and me
a rattle snake. We peeled and ate them like fruit, and went to the
nearest watering hole for whiskey. A bottle each and we drank it down in
shots like real cowboys. And each time we toasted to something new.
Something new, salute! Over and over.
But
now I can’t find where I hitched my horse, and I’m not sure whether
Johnny was never there, or if John Wayne shot him in the duel. But I’m
standing on the porch alone, and I can’t see my horse up or down the
street.
I’m not sure I can remember what it’s like to
think. How it used to be before the storm. Like when you pack up your
winter clothes and then open it back up seasons later, you realize how
much you forgot. It’s all the bits and pieces, the memories that are
forgotten and never given a reminder, that flesh you out. Give you the
history that buries deep and may never be excavated, time layering over
them with dirt and stones. I’m skin and bone, sticks and ash, and the
detritus of yesterday, all lashed together.
Very carefully, I cobble together my tomorrows.
2011
