Backyard
I look out over my mother’s backyard. The yard of my childhood. I remember heat.The concept of heat was born here. This yard. It’s sounds of cicadas and the central air unit humming in a coalescence of synesthetic swelter. The yellowing grass was in a constant cycle of waxing, overgrowth of neglect, and the waning, wilting of death.
[The lotus flower grows in mud
Submerging itself in river water
To bloom once more
On the following dawning day]
At some point in the last few years, my mother had had the old shed torn down. The yard was larger now, despite feeling smaller the way that places from childhood often do. Creating a sensation almost like vertigo. Looking down from a new height to a not quite familiar expanse. Removing that old shed was for the best. It had never served any function I could remember. The dry rot wood floors and oxidized corrugated walls had served as warning enough not to explore. Though, once as a child, I crawled under those floors. Venturing into the arid dirt underneath the warped splintering wooden slats. I found toys there. Dirty and broken. A modest treasure, perhaps left by the child of a previous home owner.
[This was Sidharta’s final lecture
A single lotus flower
held aloft for his students to see
not a word spoken]
Or was that a dream I had once? I can’t recall. Some dreams from my childhood substantiate themselves just as memories fade. Leaving a swirl of colors and sounds that will at times feel real. And at other times leave only a sense of a small questioning loss. Hadn’t the shed just sat flush with the ground? There wouldn’t have been room to burrow beneath. Let alone space for a child’s discarded trove. It didn’t matter. The shed was gone. And the toys. All I have left is the doubt.
[Doubt held in the heart
Held in the mind
Held close at hand
I have been asleep
And as I stir to wakefulness
I feel fear
Fear that I will not return to the forgetful mercurial life that had become so familiar
I am hubris.
Do you know what “Budha” means? The one who is awake. This is the spiritualist’s fear. That by walking the enlightened path you might one day get everything you ever wanted.]
I sit next to her now. My sister. She’s pale. Skinny. Her hair, naturally curled, frazzled, frayed, and damaged, rests in a tangle over the back of her chair. I don’t know how long she has been living here at our mother’s. I don’t know how long she has been sober. The weeks leading up to this moment are gone. The months. Flashes of memories. Minutes earlier I had been in the driveway. I remember that. Sitting there for too long. Staring at the back of our mother’s car. And then I was here. Sitting next to my sister and asking her how she feels.
Pain. Withdrawals. She says.
These are the words I remember. The only words of this night that will manage to transcend time into memory.
[Is there a word for memory revisited without fondness? The opposite of nostalgia. A memory returned to, for the pain of it. A scab being reopened. Peeled back and exposed. Trauma? Where reality shifted with an intake of a breath. Where the heart of the world broke and then continued to beat on in arrhythmic patterns unrecognizable. Do you know what the word ‘repent’ means? To turn around. To change paths. Look elsewhere.]
I stare in silence at the place where the shed used to be. I don’t know where else to look. Why can’t I remember how I got to this point? Where are we? The backyard. Our mother’s backyard.
[The Mother. The sacred mother. There is mother earth. Gaia. The holy mother. Divine and nurturing. The giver of life. Sustenance. And then the mirror. The profane mother. The hag. Baba Yaga. The witch in the woods. Her house is candy but only to entice the children in. They are the sustenance.]
Memories play across my mind so fleetingly and brisk as to only leave the impression of their passing.
I’m standing at night in the hallway with the bathroom door in front of me. My hand raised towards the door knob. There was no light from beneath the door but I heard gentle crying on the other side. I didn’t understand anything then but for the guilt of not opening the door and returning to my bed.
I’m standing with my sister at our mother’s bedside. She would talk in her sleep. My sister and I would laugh and laugh repeating those sleep spoken words for days. Our mother took a lot of naps. I had clung to my sister then. Six years her younger. And she, a child herself, grasping lost.
The games me and her used to play. She was the architect. Always crafting roles for the both of us. Her favorite was to play school. She’d be the teacher and I would be the student. Assigning me little tasks at my little desk. I loathed that game. I’d sit there with some hastily drawn up worksheet wondering when did the fun start?
I must have had a bad dream. Scared, I went to my sister’s room who begrudgingly and half asleep allowed me to sleep in her bed. Some time in the night I wake and stare at the back of my sister’s head. My eyes adjust to the dark. And her curly hair looks like a nest of snakes. Vipers writhing. The scales shimmering ever so slightly with the dancing colors of visual noise that only occurs in the dark. I lay there too afraid to move. If I move then they will move. I knew that. If I move then they will move.
[Your wants and desires are not your own. Your thoughts are not your own. You strip the things away that make you who you think you are and all that is left is your view of the world. The whole world is full of shadows and lights. Unnamed colors and experiences unbound by the tyranny of language. The first time you see a dog, you ask your father what it is. He says that’s a dog. And you will never truly see a dog again.]
Why do you come back here?
She didn’t say these words
Here in the backyard
These are my words
My words in her mouth
Why do you always come back here
To this place
This memory
You used to have something to say
When you remembered the words we spoke
You’d come back and speak so eloquently
Words of reassurance
That you didn’t have in the moment
Now we just sit in silence
You stare at the grass
The little path, cut through the weeds
Down the center of the yard
Where the dog used to run
You stare at where the shed used to be
You stare at my hair
My face
I told you I was in pain and you stare
Why do you come back here
Do you have a cigarette?
I pull two from the pack and offer her one to her outstretched hand. I take the other for myself and begin to pat my pockets for an elusive lighter.
A flame flickers beside me
Her own lighter
A circle of light
Illuminating the red brown off red off brown brick wall at her back
And the greens and blacks of the blades of grass at her feet
Golden trails of light ribbon in and out of the brown curls at her head
And her eyes flash lightning
Her hands
Cupped to protect the flame
With head bowed
And smoke rising lost in the night
A circle of light
Briefly there
Briefly gone
Wordlessly she offers the lighter to me
I couldn’t find my own
The flame flicks in front of me
And then it’s dark once more
Elijah Muller was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. He writes poetry and short stories when he's not bartending at Medieval Times. You can reach him at michaelmuller273@gmail.com.