All of These Horses

Today I have been a raw nerve, a bundle of them. I tried and tried again to finish a paper. Read again the description of the thalidomide babies in London that Sylvia Plath had read when she wrote her poem in 1962. This time it devastated me. I had to stop working.

Somehow I felt hungover, but I hadn't had anything to drink in days. I ate some edamame, a pear, talked with Tarfia. She felt the same. Still it hadn't sunk in. I went to dinner with friends, had a slice of lemon coconut pie. Yellow Ledbetter came on the radio. They invited me back for a nightcap, but I went home instead. Finally it hit me. April 26th. Three years since Craig went missing.

I tried to write the poem I started about him a couple of weeks ago when I was too tired and didn't have my notebook beside my bed. I always keep it there, but for some reason that day... it was something about horses. Why horses? It seemed essential then but mud before I could get to my feet.

I tried to read. I failed. When I failed, I cried. Cried is too neat a word for it. I had no tissue, and then I did what I've always feared doing: on the way to the bathroom in the dark, my kitten got underfoot, and I stepped on her tail. I recoiled quickly. My foot seared with pain. In the bathroom, bright red lines spanned two toes, and a third one seemed entirely covered. The kitten stood looking in unscathed.

I poured hydrogen peroxide again and again over the two scratches and the one gash. I almost emptied what was left of the bottle. Finally my foot felt only a dull throb.

I can't imagine doing this every year, because it isn't just today, though today is worse. Today I understand why people bury empty caskets. Though that even isn't right. But even just the wood. Something to stand in for the body, so we aren't all left with this wretched imagining. So there might not be so very many years of meantime.