untitled - part 1
A couple of weeks ago, the city got hit by a storm. It must have been the residual atmospheric disturbance from the East Coast. Trees went down like bowling pins. On my morning run, I came across one tree that was still standing, if you want to call it that. The area was taped off with yellow caution tape like a crime scene. The trunk had survived, but one limb was dangling by a strip of bark that looked disturbingly like peeled-off skin from a botched execution in a leaked cartel video shot on a Blackberry Curve.
I had the urge to give it a nudge to the limb and let gravity finish the job. But then I reasoned… nature’s been running this slaughterhouse for a few billion years. It doesn’t need my amateur hour. So I walked away. She’s all yours, gravity.
So I did what counts as a hobby for me these days. I stood there and wept. Profusely. My rib cage heaved like trying to boost an old engine. My shoulders were pounding against the air like a jackhammer hitting concrete. I dragged myself to a nearby bench, sat down, and buried my face in my hands. As I wiped my face, like a severed artery that wouldn't clot, the tears just kept gushing. I tried to stem the tide, but it was useless.
If there were a musical cue to interpret this scene, the arrangement is between a gentle Bombay Jayashri lullaby... கண்ணே... கண்மணியே... கண்ணுறங்கையோ... and a lamenting Swarnalatha wail... சாமந்திப் பூவா… ஊமத்தம் பூவா… கருத்தம்மா எந்தப் பூவம்மா… which itself doesn't feel like a song, but more like the agonizing screech of an innocent peacock with its neck pinned to the mud beneath a boot heel, crying in unendurable agony.
I stand torn between the song I wish to hear and the violence of the break itself.
Why can't it be... She packed my bags last night pre-flight, Zero hour, 9 a.m.?
Or... You got a fast car, I want a ticket to anywhere...?
Or... Some people need three dozen roses... And that's the only way to prove you love them...?
Hell, I'll even settle for... Somebody told me that this planet was small, We used to live in the same building on the same floor...
Or could it have been as simple as... If you want more love, Why don't you say so?
It took me a while to get my shit together. Once all that inner rattling dialed back down to a nominal level, I wiped my face one last time and hauled myself back onto the track. And as I ran, the old machinery started turning again. I was obsessing over the endless geometry of bonds and severances. The leaves from the branch. The branch from the trunk. The tree from the earth. The living from the dead. The dead from the living.
Were the leaves hurt? Did the branch feel pain? Or is this nature playing its own version of Russian roulette? If so... why am I still leaning toward the former? Why do I keep looking for a soul in the wreckage?
Like a child pressing her father to confess his part in her mother’s ruin... no, wait. That’s நாயகன். Like a goat chewing garbage by the tracks, watching a train sever the relationship between a coastal town vagabond and a kindergarten teacher... no. That’s கடலோரக் கவிதைகள். How about another goat running in front of a vermilion-orange truck summoned to collect a man who’s already questioning his existence by asking, "Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?" Fuck. That’s சேது on his merry way into Shutter Island.
This is the machine now: see an open wound in the timber, feel the cold strike the bone, and immediately the projector starts rolling. Which picture was this from? What track was playing on the scratchy vinyl when the world went sideways?
My wife tells me, with a diagnostic patience of hers, that I’m in a transition period. Transition? From what, exactly? From the living to the ghost? From one act to another in a play nobody bothered to script?
I have no idea. But the word stays like cheap weed smell that simply refuses to clear out, no matter how wide I throw the windows.
Maybe it’s about my dog. My north star. He moved on a while ago. That should be enough to explain things. Spoiler: it isn’t.
Kay, my past lover, offered me a curious parting gift before dropping me off at a Greyhound bus station on the very day of our rupture. She looked at me and said, “I hope one day you walk into a funeral home and experience loss.” Those were her last words.
She didn't mean it spitefully. Or at least, that is how I choose to stage the scene. What she meant, what she was truly asking of whatever gods were watching, was that I might finally lose someone pinned so close to my chest that the shockwave would shatter the glass. Not to watch me writhe in the mud, but so that I might finally comprehend the mechanics of hope. The very thing I have spent a lifetime masking behind clever theatricality and grand cynical gestures.
Though now, standing here... writing this... the mask is cracking.
She never knew what I was lugging around. I never told her. I tried to bulldoze through it with sheer willpower, which is what people do when they have no clue what else to try. Spoiler: It doesn’t work. Or maybe it works for a bit, which is probably worse.
I thought by loss, she meant the death of a loved one. A body in a box. A real, living human being. Someone who mattered. I thought she might have softly meant either my mother or my father. No. When it comes to those two, the line goes dead. Indifferent. I might tilt a fraction toward my father if pressed under the light. My mother? Not even close.
And no, that’s not spite talking. Anger would actually be easier. I’ve just finally shined a flashlight on the people who wrote my pain and realized I don’t have to keep reading from their script.
Maybe that's the transition my wife is talking about. Maybe grief finally gave me permission to stop trying to win arguments with people who aren’t even around to lose them.
The tree didn't need my help. The branch eventually fell. Everything falls. Eventually. That’s the only guarantee. The only real question is how long it takes, and how much of the tree gets dragged down for the ride.
My dog, my North Star, went supernova. And something inside me went with him. Or maybe, something else is starting to grow. Maybe these tears aren’t just pain. Maybe it’s the pain of something breaking ground. The kind that comes from something stubborn enough to push through dirt that’s been packed down for years.
I have no idea what’s growing... yet. I don’t trust it. Not even a little. But for the first time in a long time, I can feel something moving.
Thanks for reading,
V.