just follow the cat

After Words

one trillion seconds after midnight

My dear one,

We were never fixed in time, were we?

(I don't expect you to answer. Not anymore.)

For ages, I imagined that we had actually lived someplace. In a time. In a location with a real ceiling above us and a real hard-as-wood floor below our feet. But now I don't. Now, I know that we were always just floating from memory to memory with nothing in between. Nothing holding any of our stories together.

It probably shouldn't matter anymore. Not to me. And especially not to you because I've run out of coffee stories. I've sat here beside you for a year and spilled out every thought in my brain. I doubt if any of it made much sense. At least not to you. And more than likely, all the stories got boring after a while. But that's how I imagined our coffee stories beginning in the first place? They went on and on and we laughed so hard when we realized what we had done. A thread pulled a thread of a thread of a thread of a thread. So, we spent our mornings that way - in a time and a place that never really existed.

But today, I've been wracking my brain trying to conjure up the last thing you remembered of me. It was just a wish, you know. Just a dream that I was hoping would be true. So, from among all the mistakes, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities that formed my life, I tried to imagine a memory of yours that was truly about me and not a mix of this person or that. Or a fragment of one of my coffee stories. Those stories were all me, of course, but never exactly me (if you know what I mean). Then as I was getting dressed this morning, I pulled out a shirt from my top drawer. The drawers beside it have been empty for so long that I practically forgot that I used to think of them as yours. Those drawers got sticky in the summer, but mine would glide all year long. It was the humidity, I guess. Or that's what I thought, but who really knows.

There! I did it again, didn't I? I got off track - just a thread of a thread of a thread of a thread of a thread. I'm sorry. I'll make this quick now. I promise.

Anyway, as I unrolled my shirt, I pictured seeing your face as you looked up at me with some kind of brilliant amazement. You said, "Oh, you're the one who rolls your shirts." It was just a dream (and I know that), but it was such a nice dream. And I imagined you saying those words to me in April or more likely in May. May, the month of false hope. May I? Maybe. May not.

So anyway anyway, Charon. Or is it Persephone? I guess it's time, now. Time for me to climb the tree and turn into a squirrel of sorts. Up there, I can look down on a tiny patch of Earth like I'm the world's smallest moon. Everything important will be easy to see. I can watch snakes (so misunderstood) wriggle across the ground. Or spend my days laughing at each grain of sand as it preens and performs, so it might seem different than all the other grains of sand. They aren't, you know. They're just grains of sand.

And if I'm able look down, then I should be able to look up as well. Look up at the sky and watch the black (black) birds circling above my new home. Though I can't know for sure, I imagine that among those birds will be the invisible Sturnus vulgaris and the garish Corvus Brachyrhynchos. I might even hear the distant screech of a Milvus milvus, but that sound would be so faint that I'd never be sure if I had heard it or if I was letting my mind play tricks on me.

Honestly though, it wouldn't matter which birds were up there because (soon enough) they'd all be peck peck pecking at my memories. First, one would fly away with thoughts of my father saving the boy from the well and another would swoop down to get the handful of pills in his hand that were never enough. Still another bird would hear my mother's last words as she escaped into death. "Oh no," she said. Just two short words that will never have any real meaning. Then, one more black (black) bird will take away the photograph of her truest true love leaving behind the one of my father.

There'd also be a dozen roses waiting patiently for another bird to carry them off - first one dozen and then the other. That weight would surely be a heavy load for any bird, but they were heavy for me as well. Next, I can pray that six of the cleverest birds will come and untie six orange ribbons from around the necks of six cats and then fly away with them. I'll look up and see the ribbons shimmering behind the birds like a trail of gasoline dripping from a getaway car. Shimmering ribbons of gray and green and blue.

And then more birds would come. And more and more. One would take away the boy who barked like a dog. Three more would grab the dead dogs in a box. And another would carry off Crow teetering on the windowsill. Crow, the only hero I've ever known.

If I close my eyes, I can see the sounds of the cello leaving. A sound so sad and smooth. And then the half-flattened squirrel would be next - followed by the rabid horse. Then the woman in the sail boat who could never look my way. Blonde bangs. Tilted head and tilted hips. She was always so lovely. After that, I'd see the woman on the horse. There'd be hoofprints in the sand behind her. Then when I tell the old joke about one grain sand talking to another, she'd smirk - jokes like that (or maybe it was just lovers like me) were never what she wanted in the first place. But that doesn't matter anymore because she'll be gone, too.

Finally, after a million lefts and rights and rights and lefts, I'll be back on Five-Six Islands off the coast of Korea with all these wrongway fireflies swarming around my head. You know, my dear, chance can take you to so many wonderful and horrible places. I know that now. I just wish I had known it when I started these stories. So anyway, I'll stand on the smallest of the Five-Six Islands as the ocean rises up to my chest, my chin, over my eyes, and then finally over my head. I'll stretch my hand above the water and feel a black bird peck at my fingertip until it, too, is gone. Charon, dear, it's better to let some stories go. I'm sure of it now. And I promise I'll do exactly that. If not for me, then for you. I'll just let both of us be forgotten. Forgotten to be forgotten.

But don't feel sad about any of this because everything leaves in time. Or rather, almost everything. At the end, I see myself with my hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. So warm and steamy. My fingers start that magical dance closer and then further away from the cup so no finger ever really gets burned. Then (at some point) I'd look up again and see a nickel tumbling through the air. When it reaches the top of its arc, it will look like it could float forever in the sky. But then it starts falling again. Falling. Just waiting to be caught. In my head, I'll do that magical math that moves my body from where I was to where it should have been all along. I'll wait there and close my eyes again because I know that (finally) I'm in exactly the right place. You see, it happens so often (too often, my dear) - we miss who we should have loved and love who we should have missed. But not anymore because I'm here with you. Here at this moment.

When I first heard your story - a woman wandering around Mars with no name and no memories. Or more accurately, memories that were quickly slipping away. I knew that I had found you, Charon. (Or is it Persephone?) To be honest, you don't look much like the Charon I had imagined over all these years. You're a little rounder and a little browner, but I'm okay with that. You are who you are. And regardless of what people called you in the past, you seem like a Charon to me so that's what I've called you for this entire year. I hope you don't mind.

But in all the mornings we had coffee together, I never told you the man in the tree story, did I? Unlike the other stories, there isn't much to this one. In it, I just sit up in that imaginary beech tree we shared so long ago. In between sips of coffee, I'll wait for the ice cream man to come for me. Or maybe he'll never come at all. Maybe I'll be up there long enough to tell myself another thousand coffee stories. I'll wait and wait for a million years until I see two cats climb up the tree to sit beside me. One will be black with white whiskers. One will be black with black whiskers. And one will be green from head to tail.

You see, Charon, one and one doesn't have to make two if you live in a time and a place that never really existed.

I'll shutup now, dear. It's time to climb the tree.

                                                                                   Love, S