Shards of blue china

Trigger warning: Spousal death.

I don’t know how to write anything but prose poems. It’s five PM and the sun’s almost set—you know as well as I do that we’ve got miserable winters up here. The icy blue china’s been chipped for months now, and no one’s bothered to sweep up the shards in the corner. I guess that would have to be me now. It all hits me again and again in sharp breaths nearly every time I almost manage to forget. If I’m honest, it’s paralyzing.

I can do one thing. I can feed the goats. I got them because they stared out at me from the neighbor’s flaking wooden fence with big, aching eyes not unlike my own, knobby knees just a bit too humanlike. Watching them, I feel something close to maternal. I haven’t felt that since before the blue china chipped, right at the start of this long, barren year. 

I did everything more or less right away. I cut our losses, sold the other barn. Paid out of pocket for the pine box, a fistful of chrysanthemums shipped in from Europe, a simple service. Looking at those wilted flowers, I thought only of how hopeless they were; their stalks had already bowed their heads away from the sun. How touchingly sad, I thought, that humans did futile things for each other, reaching their arms as far across the world as they could for gestures that couldn’t ever be received. What did it matter to Lille if I had brought her favorite flowers from halfway across the world? She’d only mentioned them once, offhandedly, flicking back the corner of a catalogue where it showed a wooden coffee table upon which, of course, a vase of chrysanthemums sat. She was just making conversation. We walk through our lives just making conversation, just filling time and space. When you’ve been together for the better part of ten years and nothing changes, you more or less run out of new things to say, so you fold the corners back on catalogues of new things that won’t change anything and you feed the air your meaningless monologues. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Just talking to all that empty space. 

I got the goats a few weeks after the dust settled. Just needed something to look at, I guess. I tried to paint them, but I’ve always been useless at art. Couldn’t ever make anything worth seeing. The goats turned to vague gray smudges on the thin canvas, and I figured that was that. The canvases were Lille’s, anyway. So I just feed the goats. They’re eager this afternoon, and it’s occurring to me in that same slow, murky way every thought has hit me since it happened—I’m not entirely sure I’ve fed them yet today. 

When I’ve finished, I just put the feed bag back in the shed, like so. Long shadows draw on the sharp faces of the hill. I have the same thoughts every day. I’m like some anti-Heidi, I think on my way back down to the cabin, or maybe I’m her grief-stricken grandfather, all shut out from the world. Blades of grass brush my ankles and the wind whips my clothes against my skin. I see the fuzzy, pixelated cartoon Alps flash by in my mind, casting a soft glow on my young, enraptured face. It was nothing like the real thing. That was twenty years before Lille. Thirty years before after Lille. 

I used to be someone, then. There was always some central plot. Here, our protagonist goes to school. Here, she graduates comfortably in the middle of her class. Here she is with all her rejection letters pinned up on a corkboard just like Stephen King. See the projection of the city skyline against them? That means she’s somebody. 

But adult life—real adult life, not that early-twenties floundering I did—was plotless literary fiction. Vague ruminations. Watching the shadows sink into the floors of the barn. Spending seven or eight long years wallowing in all the backstory that never made it further than the coffee table when friends were over. Sucking the marrow out of weekend trips into cities, watching the lights blur by. Lille’s family farm. Static on the TV. Standing water by the back garden hose. All those bugs’ wings drenched in it. 

Moss crept over the years, and so our footfalls were soft. When I unlock the door now, it barely makes a noise. That’s the quiet kind of way I got used to living. I suppose that could only have lasted so long. I turn on the kettle, and even that seems muted. I’ve got all kinds of tea, because I like Lipton but Lille liked the real, fresh-from-the-ground stuff. She always said she could taste the Earth. I figure it checks out, because it tastes like dirt. She’d say soil. I’d roll my eyes and then roll my tires all the way into town just to see another soul, a stop sign, something. But don’t get me wrong—I’d always come back with more of the stuff, those sachets of lavender and sprigs of what-have-you. They reminded me just enough of corsages to remember I’d made a promise to her. Resentment or not, the rosemary still called out to me at the market. 

Officer, I’m not really sure where you want me to go with this. Who’s going to listen? Nobody stops to watch a life fall apart. People jump in front of trains and you’re only delayed a few hours. People waste away in hillside cabins and the world forgets them. My watercolors are just worse imitations of those bleating goats, impressions of a bleak life. My manuscripts are just trees twisted into something half-formed and ugly. Words all run into each other and those sentences speed down hills like Heidi, every bit as careless. Like runaway trains. No, that whistle’s only the kettle, but doesn’t it feel every bit as real? Don’t you ache for the rumble of the train? For the screech of metal? Tea? 

Here’s the Lipton I like. Lille caught her lip on the gate and lost her balance. Yes, that’s what happened. She flew down that hill every bit like in the movies, some breathless wind-whipping blurry camera action. I swear if you’d listened, you’d have heard the director yell “Cut!”

 I had an internship at a film production company, you know. I was going to be somebody. If they were filming this, they’d focus on the right things. I bet you’re not focusing on the right things. Have you seen the standing water? All those wings glistening wet? All those leaves curled and sun-roasted by the window? The shards of blue china in the corner? Ten years of it all built up into a film, seeping into the tap water. Lille’s family farm. How, between the two of us, her farmer’s tan was the only thing keeping us afloat. How I, no longer young enough to pretend my star was rising, could only watch the miserable things glinting at night. It’s enough to drive anyone over the edge. She wasn’t always an angel, either, Officer, although I don’t imagine you’re interested in that. There were hard winters. We ate the bruised fruit. 

I imagine you want a real confession. You’ve been salivating since you got here. You watched me feed the goats with a madness in your eye. You’re a young detective, and this is probably the first important thing you’ve ever done. But I can’t do that for you, just the same as I couldn’t make a name for myself any other way. Just the same as you soft-brained fellows down at the station didn’t get wind of this until the snow melted months post-mortem. But I just can’t put it into the words you want. 

Don’t you get it? There’s not a damn thing more to say. Couldn't write a eulogy, can't write a confession. I don’t know how to write anything but prose poems.