I shivered into bed, my fingers burning cold from wringing wet towels, while outside the rain came down in marching bands of knives and shredded silver sheets. I felt my blood bruise alone. I wanted someone to hold while rainwater soaked through the rug and old checkered shawl I rammed against the bottom of my door. I closed my eyes and fell asleep while my ground got more beaten than a heart.
I dreamed. . .
I saw my late mother, wearing that old checkered shawl, crashing a family reunion as a ghost with filthy milk for flesh, eyes as holy as they were dark knitted storms, voice as tarnished as it was pearly. I couldn’t stop being afraid of her, her lost gaze, the tomb pieces that glistened in her hair, all the blue I never thought she could make. She snatched a baby from my arms and I followed her into a dangerous kitchen. An oven tossed flames. A pot on the stove gurgled souped blisters. The baby disappeared. A gallows tree waved at me through the window. My mother lunged at me with a knife. I tore in two.
I woke up. Wept.
I see now that what I saw wasn’t my mother but my rage, my purgatory, my loneliness, my bitterness from being underestimated as a woman, all wrapped up in the image of my grief.
Come morning, I saw pictures of how the storm caused destruction all over town. I stood alone in our cold backyard and it felt like a frail stranger to me, darkened by the low drooping of things, covered in leaves like crumpled up letters, shrugging like a shoveled out organ. I wanted to scream. So, I ran. I wanted to be twenty-one. I had a certain kind of blind faith then. I was free. It didn’t matter that my dreams were bigger than my abilities. I spoke about trees no matter what.
I want to make it, God. I just want to make it.
I saw the sun shine again for one bright moment. I heard birds, too. It reminded me of when I was seventeen, walking home from high school across winter-tossed Blue Jacaranda leaves with my shoes off, feeling really good. I miss my own vibrancy while it floats all around me in sunrays. I held my door open for the sun to dry up the smell of flood, of twenty-four.
Everything has changed but nothing has.
I drove with my father through town and saw an elderly woman sweep wet leaves out the door of her small business before setting up shop. Nightmares find us but when morning comes we sweep them out the door.
Say what you want, this town is resilient.