By Lila DuBois
When the time came – I set my body to float – in a pink – plastic – inner tube.
Heaven – amen – it’s all become some sort of amen – the kind of prayer you might have sung – an amen we all know – or hope for – festering in the furthest corner of our guts – but almost never said – aloud.
But now I’d like to – I’m trying at least – to let you know how good it feels to be nothing – how good it feels – here – at the mercy of only sky and its unrelenting sun – Colorado in eternal July – no clouds – at that time of year.
I mention this only because – more than anyone – you’d appreciate the July – because you’d remember me in the sun – and because it made you happy – to know that I was well – and then your happy made me happy – too.
Before I came here – to rest – I tried to make something of it all – my epic search for the amen – the peace within the festering – the one you had – amen – and it was not nothing – coming here – waiting for the rain to pass – stopping only to sleep and pulling out early in the morning – sky still a secret pastel purple – cacti blurred – desert smear through the window – green on terra cotta – it’s all a ceramic world down there.
I passed through the in between – not quite east – not quite west – where it is too hot for most – and though you never did like it there – I felt the joy of the space – the nothingness – how good it is to feel your loneliness – hear it echo back to you – vindicated – and laugh – because in the end – perhaps all my roads lead to Colorado in eternal July – but I think you knew that.
Obviously – I knew I’d arrived when I happened upon a gas station selling pink – plastic – inner tubes – discounted price – so you know me – I pulled over right away – and decided the creek across the street – a cold and quick stream – was a sign – if you will – and you would’ve.
You’d have stopped too – because you were the one who first taught me to love things like that – to see the signs in the bell jingling – swinging door – peach rings at the register – impulse buy – eating candy and ruining my teeth – while the man outside inflated my pink – plastic – inner tube.
Walking over the bridge – loot secured – slid down the dirt slope to the ravine below – getting in where the water was still – a bit of carved earth where the current couldn’t reach – where the mosquitoes hung low – heavy – shallow enough for sun to reach straight through to sand.
I’d have stayed forever – watching the light fold in the creek – but I wanted to make use of my pink – plastic – inner tube – so quick breath – bracing for cold – I hopped in – taken up by the current in one stunning motion – a real vision I was – enjoying myself – not running away from another good thing – unafraid to melt – and make red for a moment – this clear running stream.
Eventually the time came – and my bones fell from my body rather easily – as they might from a proper brisket – bumping and turning against the rocky bottom until smooth – until they’d become stones too – and my flesh congealing into marsh – which blooms still on hot afternoons – to keep the soil tender – I am goo – rich and decadent and chocolate cake sort of mud.
My hair tangled in the reeds – then was picked up by a swallow – who’d been delighted with such a rare building material for the nest – my teeth were crushed to silt – trout fought over my skin – but the parasites – who live in apparitions of evening light just above the water’s mirror stage – won in the end – eating the swallow and I both.
My thoughts – memories – the things I knew – street names and phone numbers – high school calculus – The Cat’s Cradle – East of Eden – piano scales – family recipe for blueberry cobbler – newspaper headlines – all those cold truths and hard facts – theories of gravity – in the most basic detail – all of this thinking burned up in the white hot blare of noon – the first to go – singed to nothing before my eyes – which were by then rolling around at the bottom of the river – looking up at the sky through the crystal clear snow melt – no distortion.
The contents of the mind had gone so quickly because there was no use for any of it – no need for any hoard of intellect or the concerns I once had – and they had none of the nutrient value of – say – thigh meat – or the utility of skull – which converts well to an aquatic home – with empty eye sockets double doors – nicest on the block – pink plump brain being better fish food – than it ever was for all that wondering.
On all of me they feasted – trout – flies – toads – tadpoles – blue beetles – and silver minnows – lizards – a few deer – a baby bear – its mother – three foxes – and the mountain cats – who knelt to lap at my water’s edge – saltier now – and return with their children – I feed them too.
As for my pink – plastic – inner tube – it floated all the way to Texas – where it was picked up by a Girl Scout troop – who’d been cleaning trash out by the Gulf – catching the junk before it got all the way out to sea.
My inner tube was in perfect condition upon discovery – untouched even by the rapids at Durango bend – and the Girl Scouts had a lot of fun – taking turns and bringing my pink – plastic – inner tube on family vacations – to Lake Placid.
I wanted you to know this so that you would not mourn – so you might have a laugh even – at the whole ordeal with the peach rings and teeth turning to powder and stone bones and the
Girl Scouts – so you might see that I am not gone – not really – that actually I have just now turned to life – to creek – moss – stone – and stream.
I feel like life for the first time – in a long time –
it’s been a long time – and it feels good to rest –
I wanted you to know that – amen –
The Woodlands 