April’s Grave
Gutting doubles in an empty bar. What has become of him? So high on the hog last week and now just a miserable bag of bones and blood. Drunk for 72 hours, his mind catches fire, running hot he can't put out the ember. He had a panic attack in Stone Soup. Engaging his visceral system, he stalemates his nerves with the smoke of cigarettes and time alone. Unequipped with skills that could help him through this period of unknowing. He's experiencing moments of intense rage, spurts of irrational rage. He comes unglued under the sun; he unravels in the wind. Spiraling in a nosedive, it's a steady progression of speed that, despite his white knuckles, he can't keep up. The dogwoods are dead, and April's grace no longer shines its light on him. April's grave is shallow. The blossoms of oak trees hang low against the backdrop of the greenest green. A hole in the earth opened up and swallowed him in the open. Off guard, he didn't expect the void to follow him through mid-spring.
He looked at the cut from his belly button to his forehead. His guts lay on the floor at his feet. The breeze blows his chest open, and he's not sure if all those innards can fit back in. He doesn't mind much about his lungs, kidneys, liver, or pancreas. He's more concerned with the space where his heart beats and the unavoidable shrinkage. Over a couple blocks, his intestines leave a trail from his house to hers. He thinks about his rugs that line her floor, he thinks about her smile in golden hour. Pacing, carving a track of heartbreak, there's a divot in the road between Spokane Street and Colville.
His skin crawls against his whole body, wrinkled and worn. She said to wear sunscreen but he likes the punishment. Scrapes and cuts cover his arms. She healed him those past days, but now they fester, leaving marks; they burn alone on a couch, slouched and sinking low. The banks of that ol' Mill Crick floods; the forest conceals his anguish under a sky of purple that fuses into oranges, creating a color he's not sure exists anywhere else. The place that is his hometown is now on fire. Can he love a place more? The grapes went sour, the mash and fermentation failed. A common error in the production of love. He knew he could love her, and he knew nothing else. Steady as the sun, the green meets the gold on hills made of blues. Even in his sadness, the mountains carry him; they carry him farther than he can go on his own.
