"I'm interested in the way the tree shadows on the rock art in the way bodies would have shadowed when the rock was carved thousands of years ago."
Amy Bobeda directs the Naropa Writing Center, where she also teaches pedagogy and process-based art. She's the author of Red Memory (FlowerSong Press), What Bird Are You? (Finishing Line Press) and some other things. @everystoryisamenstrualstory (Instagram) @amybobeda (Twitter)
A Love Letter
Non-Fiction by Emma Jarman
CW: Mention of Death
Dedicated to A.J.N.
The echo of his absence deafened her, muting the paltry condolences that chased her like bloodhounds to a stag. The lack of his existence left more than a void; not a hole or a pit, but a deep, spiraling anguish that tore pieces from her face and her soul and her stomach and ran away, leaving her to wander, more than empty, alone.
Her grief was vacuous, siphoning her appetite, her once shameless smile, her will to get up, like gasoline from an old, tired tank. Once drained, it moved into her, filling the bled dry wounds and settling like arthritis in her chest. Where orangey flames had once giggled and danced, grief cracked and groaned, sucked and filled. Like a black hole, it turned her inside out.
She greeted her grief in the morning like the smell of brewed coffee as it coaxed her at dawn from unwelcome sleeplessness with its bitter depth, forcing her, again and again, to go on.
She lived in her grief for so long it was home. She thought of it each day and returned to it at night, pulling the fear of its abandonment round her frail, sloping shoulders like the moth-bitten housecoat her mother wore, and her grandmother before them. Tears licked the envelopes stuffed with letters never sent. Cheap wine guarded the ashtray that spilled over her bedside.
For years she sought unhappiness, comforted by its abundance and how easily what Was could remind her of what Wasn’t. Her proclivity for self-destruction allowed a few, here and there, the opportunity to care for her. She knew it was never enough. She’d say it never mattered, awash with relief as they all drove away.
Sometimes, her grief would lift and she’d have a lovely day, drive to the beach and watch seagulls feast on the remains of a family picnic, stop at a bookshop and pick up a fiction novel with a pretty cover, arrive home and read a bit of it. The ends of these days, though, even more than the rest, found her quivering in fear; and in sinking sunlight she’d crawl to the closet to rock mournfully on the floor, the box of his things strewn about her bare feet, feeling wretchedly abandoned by her grief. After a time, she’d put them away, back in the box, back on the shelf, and shove her sagging mattress to the corner of the cold, dark room. Then, she’d crawl in with her cigarettes and wine, press her back to the wall and cry herself to sleep.
Many mornings she’d drive past the sun-dappled patch of grass where a tree used to stand, searching for ghosts and tire-skidded lines in the dirt, long since erased by rain and wind and time. I still love you,she’d whisper to the charcoal stump that stared back; all that was left of them both. Her words lingered for a moment, suspended in the air between her lips and the steering wheel, before disintegrating like nicotine ash in her lap. As things do. Then suddenly she’d leave in a hurry of ache–for him, for love–spiraling toward home to write letters to them both.
Emma Jarman is a recovering journalist teaching English in the special education setting in a small town in Oklahoma. Her daughter, Kate, is her favorite feature. She loves to hike and to bake and may never finish wandering. @illwritealready (Instagram)