The Orange Gabbeh
On a night in early August, I stood on the steps and gathered my belongings, tail tucked and all. The orange Gabbeh in ombré with ornamental figurines dancing on the edges lays 5’ x 5’ when opened but on the concrete laid in a contorted mess, corners over the middle and halfway rolled. Through blurry vision, I imagined him struggling to take it down the four flights your apartment requires. I can’t help but realize that you couldn’t have carried it down all by yourself. Memories and malcontent weave themselves into the face of my bright orange Gabbeh. The warp and weft make more room for history as the pile, about an inch high, displays a new color not yet seen and shines like a dreary sheen. The Gabbehs are unique in the world of Oriental rugs; little is seen in intricacies as the construction speaks for itself, unpretentious in the lack of spandrels and medallions, save the serged edges that bound the fibers for longer than either of our lives will last us. The Gabbeh is not a design bound to primary or secondary borders.
I should have listened to Pen. I should have waited to see where it might go before severing the connection between myself and the ground, between what was in my chest and what was in yours. This is what I do. I ante more than is required and call it compassion rather than seeing it for what it is. Desperation in times made more desperate by a heart too big for its body and an uneasy head. I collected my carpet along with the Corridor button-up I gave you to wear in the Valley’s most unpredictable spring. Reeking of heartbreak and bourbon, I drove to Vincent’s. Have you ever been so low? I wonder whose feet were dragged across my rug? Who the owners were before me? What acrimony has beset itself against the face and now recedes to the foundation? I like to imagine the orange Gabbeh has a soul like mine, a soul soiled and traipsed across; they both could use a wash. I should value that I am still intact, my edges woven in a barber pole, my face still uncreased and mostly unblemished.
In the Orient sky, the sun stands to rise and lights a flame across clouds of stratus and cirrus. The light refracts and strikes through trees in the moss-overgrown. The mornings are brisk and bite with a coldness across from the cemetery. I feel at home here, in love with family, grateful for rug-covered floors and the wails of an upstairs baby. The mist in early morning hangs low in the air, suspended, settling at the eye-line, the mire levitating, aiming for the skin covered in my Corridor peacoat. I made it; I made it to the only destination that seemed worthwhile, as the story of where I was previously is bleak and covered in films of smoke and ash. Under the Orient sky, Gloom City feels like a new life. I spent the end of Summer and the entirety of Fall wishing to disappear, basking in the removal of my safety net; to fall would mean to fall forever, absent from the life I massacred. Like a man adrift at sea, floating on the remnants of his sunken ship, there’s a stack of steam rising on the horizon, and all I need now is to wait for its arrival.
Like an anchor, my orange Gabbeh grounds me, laying as evidence of all things unworthy. Aiming for retention, I’ve pieced myself enough, the sum of my parts insufficient to form valuations or judgments. Gloom City, underneath an occidental sky, the sun sets and matches my Gabbeh, ombre in the sky; bright yellow sits on the horizon as the pink grips the curvature while a peppering of clouds drifts above the city I call home. Down below, an orange burns and burns, burning increasingly brighter; it’s not until the crepuscular hour, before the gloom when the yellow fights its hardest, a yellow in resilience and a Gabbeh made in orange.
