—EVERY BRICK IS GOING DOWN THE WRONG ROAD

  

                                             There, Not There

 

My lover wears a mask when we make love, says it keeps her nose warm, her extremities focused and precise. When at last I reach a station, she says, There, not there. There. There.

The mattress is overloaded with bills—phone, propane, utilities, garbage, sewer, Nordstrom and MasterCard. As we shift across them, each note mewls, demanding attention, if not also payment, and there’s a further wilting.

So we slow play, her skin like faience, her eyes darting minnows. I notice everything, her centipede brows, the lack of Botox, the faint popcorn seed scar on her right temple. After all, these are the days of wine and more wine, despair deaths on an incline, though our skins have never been more desperate.

There, not there.

The pandemic has pulled us into another galaxy, a retreat of regrets that we suck on when we’re unsure, which is all the time. The pandemic has a punch line it alone knows alone. The pandemic has a loan shark’s recollection.

There, not there, my lover says when I push the wrong button again.

Before all the infections, the trees used to quote us their history and the geese were reliable fortune tellers. Now every fish in the lake makes a ruckus, carnival barking trout and loud-bellied bass belittling even our frailest fears. It would be funny if the neighbors ever stopped shooting.

Her grandfather passed first, then grandma. Their years had slowed to a cough, but still. Then her dad. And now her mother is tubed and remote.

If we could be happy one night, the sun just might let us off easy, and the moon might repossess our doom under different conditions. Or so we hope.

With the mask on, I can’t tell if she’s smiling or in agony. I can’t even be sure it’s her, though her bones weigh about the same as always.

When I try my usual trick, she grabs my wrist and escorts it to another planet. There, not there, she says one final time, as if I’m supposed to know where we’re headed.