The Nada

Salvador Dali's Clock Explosion

Today, loss washes inside of me like the leftover milk in the bowl I carry to the sink. Each of my steps forces a thin skim of white over the bowl's blue insides. Sloshing precariously close to the edge of the rim, the liquid threatens to spill over, wetting my hands, my pants, my feet. If I'm careful, I can right the bowl and avert the mess.

I don't want to be careful, though. I want to send the bowl crashing, the muscles of my throwing arm stretching and flexing as the bowl splinters into jagged shards, the milk running down the wall in rivelets. As a young married woman, angry over something I can't even remember now, I hurled a bowl of chocolate pudding against our rented beige wall. The pudding stuck in clumps, sweet brown tumors holding their tremulous form until plopping onto the ruined dish.

I should make a gratitude list. I should reflect on the symbolic beauty of the flash of red bird against the bare branch. I should pull myself up by my damned bootstraps, and lay my face against the window glass to feel the sun's warmth.

Instead, emptiness wraps its arms around me, pulling my head close to its chest. "Fall into me," it croons, giving me the come-hither look I've come to know.

What's left are these: pale, still unformed eyelids that I couldn't save, no matter how hard I prayed; blue laundry stamps on white hospital sheets, rigor setting in; a cheap gray box marred by a spot of blood near the head; words--words I didn't say, words I shouldn't say, words I said; time wasted and measured and used up, flat now like Dali's clock; a woman I never knew crying for her children in the common room, rocking and rocking and rocking herself; meanness of spirit, you selfish girl, did you have to think so much of your sorry self?; so many souls scattered like grains of uncooked rice; pregnant moments on the edge of the sea, promise rising like ripples of waves touching my feet.

(I plant my feet firmly in the wet sand, grains whooshing out with the tide, throwing me off balance.
Still I fight not to fall, digging my heels deeper, though I lose, and I cannot breathe for the sand that plugs my nose.  The enormity of what has passed is too much, and I close my mind against the sum.)

Later, in the dark kitchen, I find myself pouring the milk into the sink drain and rinsing the dish with warm, clear water before setting the blue bowl intact on the counter.

Finding Truman



Photograph by Irving Penn, 1965



Truman,
are you there? Sometimes I hear
your next drink sloshing in the shaker,
small ice crystals frenzied in their swirl,
both numbing and greasing at once.

An olive, Mr. Capote?

Where does a mind like yours go
when a heart like yours ceases to beat?
If I breathe deeply enough,expanding my nostrils for maximum intake,
will one of the molecules expelled by you
find its way into me?
Will I then be breathing in a little of the Clutters,
a little more of Perry and Dick,
and some of the darkness you carried with you to the end?

Though I don't have 94% recall,
will you bleed through my pen,
creating havoc on my yellow legal pad?
If you could, Truman,
would you prime the pump for me?
Unleash the words clogging
my brain, help them drip and spread
into a pool of wonder on the page.
I'll see your reflection when I gaze upon it,
I promise.
In the meantime, Truman,
I'll continue to lead them
to the altar of you.