The Space Between
by Andrew Rayle
I remember the hot days when the tires stuck to the roads like wet Velcro, the smell of burnt foreign food and the magic sound of piano rising above more than just our neighbor’s doublewide, the never ending detours during downtown reconstruction, and watching you wiggle your toes in your sleep.
I remember watching the boats pour into the port, and how you would complain of an uneasy feeling, muttering, “Just one life isn’t enough to keep you busy.”
Going through boxes of your old things I find spirit candles still in the shape of perfect cylinders from when I bought them for you some time ago. I remove four of the pearl white wax candles and your favorite Zippo lighter and form a semi circle in front of me and light them. Continuing the excavation I let the molten wax run onto the worn wooden floor. I find the set of Matryoshka dolls your brother gave you and begin laying them out in front of me from biggest to smallest. Unfortunately the meaning of it was lost when in the smallest doll I find a small plastic bag of heroin. God damn how I’ve cried so hard and so much for you, wouldn’t you know that in this moment my eyes have never been more dry? Fumbling with the dolls, I feel them resist as I struggle to put them all back together together, one after the other.
I remember how easy it was for you to understand, “To picture the world without all the things that make you unique is to realize one’s built in obsolescence and experience the true absurdity of the world from the perspective of the only being that can.” You spent half a life searching for an answer, an answer you spent the rest of your life trying to avoid before your eyes rolled like dusty marbles across the floor of your mind.
I remember how curious and resentful you were of our dying plant’s honesty and how long you could stare at it with your eyes glossed over, somehow looking deep into the makeup of the plant way past anything it chose to share with me.
Watching TV, I remember how jealous you were of the magic of the muscles in the legs of a fawn who takes his first steps, you said, “Insanity hurts in the same way it hurts to lose anything you love, like a contest or a father.” After all I knew I could never take away the power which resides in the ability to judge your own condition. “In the end,” you said, “the judge isn’t the one holding the gavel but the gun.”
I wrap my shoulders in your heavy winter coat and take a few steps into the night. I remember how you would say, “Always, always stay true to the vision,” as I walk through our backyard, kicking up burnt-out fireworks laying dormant, entangled in the wet grass.
I remember when the sun was more than a thing in the sky but a place on the horizon, and how you stroked the beams of light in your lap like an invisible cat.
There was a time when I was still able to hear you say, “Your eyes form the constellation by which I travel through the dark,” but now I only remember walking in on you dueling with your senses, holding your trembling fingers over cheap plastic lighters with your eyes closed tightly, and how your wet cheeks gleamed with the reflection of the flame.
I knew it was the last time I was ever going to see you when I found you disassembling our TV set with your father’s old tool kit asking, “Where did all my memories go,” with feet folded on the floor, addressing the pliers and the screw drivers and not the heart-broken mess that had just walked through the door.
I remember the day your father’s estate check came in the mail, and how you said this confirmed that all our problems were over. I remember how the air in the store smelled of cement and fruit scented cleaning products when we went shopping for your casket. It was a metallic light blue with ruffled satin and chrome handles. How you insisted on the biggest and most reflective one you could find. And the night I couldn’t sleep finding you with one of my bras tightened around your arm revisiting hidden worlds in your satin bathtub and how limp and heavy your body was trying to lift it up and on to the gurney.
When I walk through the dull light I remember how my mind spun and whirled to the rhythm of the paramedic’s words. “How much did he take? Is this his first time? Are you high right now? Why do you have a casket in your living room?” All were perfectly good questions, though none of them I ever bothered to ask, on the night their words and not yours were my dancing partner.
Page Two