we couldn't see outside

we couldn’t see outside

           It’s an orange kind of day now that the wildfires have settled and infected the rest of the world. I inhale pinkish smoke until my chest feels strange and heavy. Imagine a leaf curling inwards from decay; I imagine this is how my lungs react to the new substance.

           “I had a dream,” I begin, all Martin Luther King Jr without the voice for revolution.

           “Cool.” She replies, effectively cutting me there.

We walk over a metal bridge, which I assume was once black as iron, is now red with rust. Water underneath a bridge feels fresher somehow; beneath the canopy of trees, the air feels much cleaner. I inhale and she makes a face at the sound.

           “There used to be a beaver,” I point in front of me, far towards the edge of the riverbank where a pile of neglected chewed tree trunks and sticks form the silhouette of what once used to be a dam.

           From afar, the dam looks like a gaping mouth; a wallower soaking in rivers of misery.

           “I don’t see it,” she squints her eyes for a moment and then looks elsewhere.

           “It had a broken arm. It was limping last year,” I muse, gaze resting on the concaving home.

           She doesn’t reply. She’s not listening.

           We walk in silence except for the thud of our shoes against metal, and then the crackle of earth and twigs under our footsteps. Her hand brushes against the back of mine momentarily—my heart skips— and then she is two steps ahead.

           She has always been a hummingbird to me: narrow frame, and delicate features. It must be that lightning-crazy energy about her, the kind of buzz that makes hair rise. I remember, once, she had a name. It evades me today. Maybe she lost it in flight.

           “I had a dream about flying,” I say to her back.

           She twists her ankle slightly over a rock but doesn’t stop moving. I struggle to catch up. I keep pace behind her, so she doesn’t have to see me.

           “Except, I wasn’t flying like a bird or anything… I just floated up from the ground. I was lying down on the grass, underneath the sun… and it was hot outside… and,” I struggle to maintain my breath, “I was staring at the clouds, which were so so white. And I saw this image of a hand, so I reached up… you know, like this,” I imitate the action even though she doesn’t look back, “and then suddenly, I slipped out of my body.”

           She slows down enough so that I can catch up to her. We walk for a moment side-by-side. A distant woodpecker grinds its beak into the crackling, dusty flesh of a white poplar. As we near the clearing, the smoke thickens and fills the atmosphere with a hazy hue of pink. I can feel the air coat my body. I inhale deeply without intending to. We walk down the gravel path, around the pond where a mother duck leads her babies to their nesting site. It frightens me that there are no mosquitoes around to pester us.

           “We really chose a good day to go for a walk, didn’t we?” I half-joke.

           “It’s just a short one,” she replies, not smiling.

           It frightens me more that we don’t choke as we speak, even though the air is getting heavier. We disperse back into silence. Two dragonflies mate in the sky, it feels like watching a battle sequence, or a very violent dance. It looks like a two-headed dragonfly except I can’t tell if it's ascending or descending. Where are its wings?

           She sways slightly towards the wild wheatgrass, draws a loose arm through their dancing length. The edges of her dress flutter, picking up a silent breeze. Without the heft of her eyes, she reminds me of a time long before when she was alive.

She used to look so beautiful up in the air, frills of her dresses formed petals above us. I remember the way she fell, although I don’t recall what she looked like. I thought I was watching a comet score the horizon, except all that was in sight was a thin line of smoke, and perhaps a flicker of bright-white hair.

           She never told me why she fell. Or maybe I don’t remember anymore.

           “What happened?” She asks after a moment, hiding her interest behind a tone of monotony.

           “Huh?”

           “You slipped out of your body…”

           “Oh, right,” I scramble to remember my thoughts. My hands shake so I grip them into one tight fist, “nothing really… I just remember looking down at myself, and we locked eyes… but…”

           In my periphery, I see her glance at my hesitation. I don’t like meeting her eyes when they don’t burn, so I look elsewhere.

           “But I didn’t have a name,” I continue, “I couldn’t give that… person? Skin? I don’t know, whatever, a name. Because it was mine, and it didn’t belong to her… that person on the ground. It was mine, but I had taken it.”

           She stares down at the gravel path, so she doesn’t see how the sunlight glints and bounces in odd refractions through the smoke and over the water. She doesn’t know how ethereal she looks, doused in flames. She shivers.

           “What does it mean?” She asks me, still staring down. I stare at the bony bulge at the back of her neck. In the smoke, her skin looks ashy and gray.

How must it look like, the back of my own neck. Same as hers. I wonder whether the light bounces as beautifully off my own skin. I wonder what she sees now that there is no light. She doesn’t look up often, and when she does, it’s to bring herself down.

“Not sure,” I shrug, kicking a stray rock off to the side. It rolls erratically and bounces to a stop when it hits dirt.

We walk forward silently. A heron passes overhead and settles between the brambles by the bank. In the before, she would be the one to point it out. She’d say it symbolizes change and transformation. She’d tie herself to its soul; she’d fly off as she spoke, already in the air before I would even take notice.

“Look,” I say, pointing, but she has wandered far off ahead.

From afar, and perhaps it’s the angle and the lighting, she looks like she’s floating.

We walk towards home in the growing dusk, which is hefty like a fist full of pennies. She used to joke her success was in the glass jar on her desk, which she filled with coins at first, and then small seashells.

“It’s more fitting, isn’t it?” She’d always say when I asked but she’d never explain more.

Just like when she left the note on the counter, but there wasn’t anything good, only “I love you.”

We reach the door.

“Who did you give it to?” I ask after a moment, so softly it barely leaves my lips; I know she hears it because her smile fades; she looks away.

“Who would want it?” Her voice is a small breath exhaled; the whites of her eyes capture the red-rosy residue of evening as she turns to look at the houses behind us. But the irises remain dark and empty.

Everyone, I could say but it feels fitting to keep silent the way I imagine her last fall. The window never creaks in my ear, and neither does the flailing whoosh of her arms and legs through the air. She’s always mid-air when I close my eyes, both flying and falling.

She doesn’t say anymore but when she takes the key from my hand, it feels like air. And, when she manages to shove open the creaky door, I do not hear her footsteps. She disappears into the darkness of the entryway. She doesn’t look back to see if I come.

I stay at the threshold of the door, grounded in place, staring up at the staircase. I take root like the carnelians and white chrysanthemums in their respectful ceramic pots.

Disappearing feels like this: she has flown away from sight, but I am vanishing in place. I misremember my name. I remember that I never gave her one. Or, if I did, I do not recall it. I don’t know what she took. I don’t know if I am returning or leaving. I stay put.

When the evening breeze sways gently into the alcove of the porch, it brings with it a stray mosquito. Somewhere, behind me, I pretend there is no wildfire haze, and that there is a full moon glowing like an open eye. The eyes of the dandelions are bright and wild. Just like the ascending moon. Just like the silver gleam of the doorknob, lock still holding the key. The mosquito buzzes around the flowers before it reaches my ears; I sway, too, with the wind.