unto day

Inside my mom’s garage, smoking a cigarette. Forcing myself to finish it. Watching the tops of the trees sway in the wind. I don’t know what types of trees they are, which grieves me. The gray clouds flee across the sky. The gray clouds, also green. The sky, or what I can see of it through the fleeing clouds, yellow. The groan of the wind against the houses, whining through the bone-stiff palm leaves. The humidity. It weeps in my ears. The rain comes in waves. It heaves. It shudders. The slick on the pavement. The rain glistening in the slick. Dull. Travis from pest control walks up. He wears a black windbreaker. A black hat. His brown hair curls out from beneath the black hat. Black shorts. Black sneakers and black socks. A black wedding band around his ring finger. “I don’t want to bug you,” he says. He is not bugging me. “I’m Travis from pest control,” he says. Dressed in all black, his brown hair, his tan skin, his sea-foam eyes. “I work with some of the neighbors here,” he says. “Okay,” I say. I think about you. About your hair. The way you tie it up. How it doesn’t stay in place. It falls out around your face, and you tie it up, again. You want to grow it back, you said. Have it long, again. If you could grow your hair back, you’d get your life back, you said. Travis from pest control says, “Are you good on that?” “On what,” I say. “Pests,” he says. What pests, I want to say. Snapping turtles. Alligators. Possums, maybe. “Well,” I say. “I think so. I don’t live here. My mom lives here. I’m just visiting. But I think she’s okay.” Travis from pest control smiles. “I think she’s good,” I say. Travis from pest control says, “Alright.” He says, “Have a good day.” “You, too,” I say. He walks away, reluctant. Reluctant as he ought to be, soliciting business in a hurricane. The sky blackens to the south. The trees have needles. Coniferous. Stray needles litter the street. The panting forest, a black wall, swells and retreats against the anemic subdivision. I think about your hands. They’ve gotten fat, you said. Swollen. From the drugs, your medication. The medication you take for being sad, but also the other medication. The one that makes you sick. The one you have to keep taking to avoid the sickness. The other one that makes you feel, again. I don’t think they’re fat, I said. They’re still beautiful, I said. Long fingers. Skin pale and freckled, like warm milk sprinkled with nutmeg. I think about your eyes. They’ve become dull, you said. From the drugs, you said. I disagree. Still so blue, they’re almost purple. Lashes so long, they kiss your eyebrows. I don’t know what I thought. I thought that if I saw you, maybe I’d stop thinking about you so much. If anything, the opposite is true. I don’t know why my brain works that way. A sick lust for endings. The end in all things. Yearning for cadence—craving it. The fantasy of closure, of resolution: the abyss. Now, I think about your hands, your eyes. The beads of sweat on your pale forehead, winking in the sunk light of the mute television. The scar on your pale knee. You ripped out the staples yourself, you said. You ripped them out beneath the noonday sun, in some parking lot somewhere. The wound opened, yawning and mean in the hard sun, you said. It healed poorly, you said. And now, the scar. Geese bleat and moan. They fly over the house, a lazy wave on the horizon. I observe the geese. Travis, off down the street, also observes the geese. The tops of the trees claw at their bellies. The geese evade the trees, disappearing. The rain spits. It hisses. I finish the cigarette.