She lets go of the notebook, and
of course it falls, lands with a
“pluff” on the comforter as she walks
past on her way out of the room.

Abandoned? How so?

Don’t make her say it. . . . “I left my sons, moved
away from them so,” she says, “I could find myself.”

Don’t make her say it: “I will leave you too as
I have been left. First him, then him, then another
him. I will gravitate toward you, dance with you in
twinned orbit. But you must know I will let go.”

It must be said: “I can’t be your anchor. I am
too intemperate, too much like the weather.
Having been left, I will leave. Having left, I am gone.
May I be forgiven if by leaving I cause you any harm.”

Now that that’s been said, let’s begin
again—pick up where we left off: “Your tea
is cold,” she says. “Would you like me
to warm it up for you?”

Like a time-lapse view of a melting ice cube,
or the erasure of a blackboard equation, he
disappeared from his face. All the features
remained: a head, a nose, eyes, mouth.

What melted away right at that moment
was who he was. Once a familiar relative—
now a total stranger. A being without
a story, zero associations, nameless.

She marveled at the fluidity of her
perception. The building blocks and
scaffolding of the mind just tenuous
threads, gossamer filaments.

The brain as cotton candy.  
Where others may have panicked,
raced to gather all the vanished
referents of this person, she floated

calmly in the buoyant waters of
the impersonal. She only resisted
when the reel began to play in reverse
and—feature-by-feature—this

family member re-inhabited the
body sitting across the room
from her and she could only try
in vain to forget again.

What was significant wasn’t the trails, the evergreens and the leafless maple and birch, the view of surrounding hills and the patched blue and white sky.

What was significant was the terror she felt as she prepared to leave her apartment—alone. Navigating the streets and highways leaving the city; stopping a few times for errands and entering the stores—alone. Searching for, finding, and buying what she needed and exiting—alone.

It was the anxiety of getting to Lone Tree Hill, of finding it, never having been there before. Parking the car in a vacant lot across the road from the trail head then worrying that it might not be there when she returned. It was the indecision regarding which trail to take among several, and the worry that she might lose her way.

She never stopped to question that she—an adult with decades and decades of life experience—should have these fears. Instead, she held them, watched as they lumbered about the chambers of her heart, and then, one-by-one, exited—leaving her alone again.

Who knew spring could
bring such surprises—

sparrows excavating beak-by-beak
a grapefruit-sized hole in the crabapple
that grows between two 3-family
houses on Franklin Street,

the last jab of a miracle
serum that so many others are
dying to get, and others who
have died waiting for.

And I—after living five years under
ground—feasting on the view of tiny,
chartreuse leaves on the zelkova
tree across the street;

starlings, house sparrows, blue
jays, robins, and mourning doves
strafing past my 2nd floor window
on their flight paths back and forth.

Who knew those five years of
basement dwelling so molded me,

shaped me like a recluse, a contented
she-bear sleeping 10 hours a day,
never knowing what the weather was
doing, what visions I was missing?

Like the surprise snow on April 16
dusting, then completely covering the purple
and yellow pansies I’d so uncharacteristically
planted in window boxes the week before.

Who knew I’d ever be cloaked again
in this shawl of optimism, this “blithe spirit”
that comes from living with the living,
seeing the seen, being the being?

Sitting on the banks of the
Big Sur River—a person in
flannel and denim, named and
identified, albeit uncomfortably so.

What’s missing? Fauna. No fauna
except for the small brown scorpion
on the lapel of one’s jacket.

“I thought you were a Gemini.”
“I am.”
“Then why do you have a scorpion
embroidered on your jacket?”
“Where?!”
“There.”

Scorpion gingerly removed
with a manzanita twig, flanneled
and denimed returns to the
Big Sur and gets lost in the fluidity,
flowing through identities—
first this one, then that one.

What name shall we give ourselves?
Wanting to hide all of it: the Welsh, the
Confederate president, the dreary
commonness of it all.

In an attempt to sever past
associations, we commit posthumous
patricide, jettison “Davis” . . . for what?
What goes in that empty space on the
line at the bottom of all forms?

What rings true? And what does truth
mean anyway? Why not Lie? Such a small
phoneme—Lie. Why not let falsehood stand
in for a name?

And so, standing now, walking now, back
to the tent, newly knighted, self-named, thus:
A. Lie

OK, you. What do you want? Those eyes? Those *******? Those full lips? Those pretty prominent front incisors? What is it with that? The teeth?  

Why do you want all this? The house. The car. The job. The partner. Maybe even a second house? Who made you Hera—Queen of the Universe—Ruler of All Gifts and Comely Attributes?

I see you hiding there behind your confident swagger, your calm, all-knowing Buddha smile, hands in pockets—empty as they are.

Who me?  

Yes, you. In your faded Levi’s jacket and those age-defying ****** red low-top sneakers.

Really? Moi? . . .

Who else?

. . .

I know! I got it!

What? What you got?

It’s because we were born in the wrong body.

Really? You think that’s it?

Well, yah!

But, wasn’t everybody? Wasn’t every body born in the wrong one? Doesn’t everyone at one time or another wish circumstances were reversed? “I’ll trade you my small feet for your flaxen hair.” “You give me your heterochromian eyes and I’ll give you my wide-set hazel ones.” Even royalty have that nagging sense they’d be better off in some other tale, playing some other character. “Oh god,” the king cries, “make me a cobbler! Please!”

Dearly beloveds, we are gathered today to honor the life of this Leptoglossus Occidentalis (Lo for short), who was sadly found drowned in the toilet bowl of a second-floor apartment on Franklin Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday, March 28, 2021.

Little is known about Lo other than an assumed lack of discernment regarding the character of water vs land, their poor swimming skills, and that their ancestors are native to western North America, most likely California, and that they have relatives living as far west as Tokyo and as far east as Croatia. We can attest, however, to the insupressable will to live—in the Schopenhauerian sense—of this Leptoglossus Occidentalis. After being fished out of the toilet bowl and placed delicately on the window sill above the bathroom radiator Lo moved an inch or two in the span of twelve hours, using only one hind leg, which resulted in their taking a westward path where they finally stopped, either due to exhaustion, death, or lack of interest.

We will never know if, in the throes of death, Lo was trying to make a pilgrimage to their ancestral home somewhere in the Redwoods of the Coastal Range where we imagine their cousins live safely away from plumbing.

Did Lo suffer? Did they “Rage against the dying of the light”? Or, were they stoic in the manner of Epicetus? Or was Lo renunciate in the Buddhist sense?

Given the simplicity of their life style—living on tree sap and pine seeds, hence the common name Western Conifer Seed Bug—we believe this Leptoglossus, this true bug, as it were, was indeed Buddhist. And, unlike Dylan Thomas, went gently into that good night.

May they and their loved ones be at ease.