I have a suspicion that in this life, mirrors are not meant for looking into but rather for looking out of; I only have to master this kind of looking, and then I will be able to see what the outside has to offer, instead of only seeing myself looking outward and being confronted with the self who looks outward ad infinitum. Sometimes, I have a paranoia that I am not living this life but another one that was invented for me, and this is only a long daydream, the kind where only bad things happen. But when do the daydreams begin and the dreams end, and where does the sky end and the prairie grass begin? There are stars in the grass. In July, it is thirty degrees. I want to tell my father that I love him. My childhood home goes drifting in the black and raging river. My mother teaches me how to use a needle and thread. To reclaim love is to risk certain death. For some people, the pain from shingles never goes away. The medicine bottles do exhaust themselves despite my not opening them.
At what point are you mine and then not mine? There are no apologies, no grievances, no I wish I had. My mother says that she knows my ailment; she says that in her language, the name of the illness means an explosion of snakebites. Sometimes, I still feel a gripping and then a burning. The test was positive. Then it was negative. My daughter turns into a sheet of paper. I have fragments all around, but they never get turned into anything. In my future imagined, I am dying and this is not conditional. If I had asked my father to stop the car, if I had gone out to look into the puddles of Wyoming sky and prairie-grass stars, would something then have occurred? Would I have seen more sky or myself looking to see more sky?
There is a type of daydreaming that can foretell the future, a type of dreaming that explains why nothing is being written. She turns into a sheet of paper. When does the dream stop being a daughter and start being a sheet of paper? At what point are you mine and then not mine? At what point was she my baby and then not my baby? It was and then it was not. What the season brings us to suffer (because seasons, no matter how lovely, will bring us to suffer), it brings when we are not looking.
I know the look of a cracked landscape, winter in black and white, flat and finite with a sunset on the horizon like a red heartbeat suffering there. It will take me longer each morning now to go out and face it. The CAT scan has been scheduled for Wednesday.
How is it that I came to be here this way, with the wind a suggestion that it was, indubitably was, autumn (already and again)? What I want was in bed; he kissed me and said good-bye. And at three o’clock in the afternoon, the world takes on a stormy look.
The X-ray technician asks if there is any possibility I could be pregnant, because if I am, harm to the fetus could occur, might occur, should occur, would occur, could have occurred, might have occurred, should have occurred, or would have occurred.
Don’t move, she says.
For some people, the pain never goes away.
Forecast Essay
Everyone is dying
Everyone is dying. I must remember this always but especially whenever I am on the phone with my mother and she is telling me that her mother has died. I must begin to treat everyone I meet and visit as if they are, very soon, going to die. I too am dying. I need to begin believing this, especially whenever I have a goal of spending the day in my study concentrating on nothing but my writing and do not spend the day in my study writing. I need to begin treating my thoughts, observations, and inclinations, that find themselves manifested as rhythms, that then suggest words and paragraphs and landscapes of syntax, as if they too are dying and will not be remembered again, will never again present themselves with the opportunity to be written down. In order to be a better writer and better reader, I need to believe in my own death and in the death of others.
I will grow into madamhood
Last week, returning my library books, a gentleman passes quickly in front of me, pauses to say, “Excuse me, Miss,” before moving on. Today, in the deli, the worker asks, “Can I help you, Miss?” It occurs to me that I am a miss, and I wonder when I will no longer be a miss and will begin to be a ma’am. I am not even quite sure what ma’am is; I think it must be an abbreviated version of madam. In French, instead of miss, there is mademoiselle, which means little or young madame; therefore, I am a little madam. I will grow into madamhood, just as I grew into miss-hood. A miss is someone who is addressed. A girl child is never addressed. (I knew for certain when I ceased to be a girl child, because I was suddenly being addressed.) A madam, on the other hand, addresses. I see these women in the deli, and
