study (on pain)
By this point, I have been hiding in this straw-floored barn for about six hour. All around are the echoes of horses, this is a smell that is familiar. I had to come here because I got into an argument with my sister and I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.
My knees are bent beneath me, I’m squatting but am careful to not lean against anything in here. I can hear birds outside, and the wind is pushing against the roof into the crevices between the barn’s infrastructure. My breathing was still fast because I ran all the way here but I tried holding it to bring it to a slower rhythm.
It’s not autumn yet, so it’s neither too hot or cold in here. Sort of stuffy, but the dust collects and there is little chance to air out except for during the summer when both large barn doors are swung wide open and we each take turns sweeping it out, bringing to life large dust clouds that hang and sting your eyes and nose.
I’m not sure of which part hurt me the most. The voice my sister used to yell at me, calling me spoiled and blaming me for the spilled ashes on the tile floor of the living room. The broken pieces of ceramic. Or the fact that my father didn’t once say anything during this. That he didn’t defend or reprimand me. He stood in silence and walked into the kitchen to put away the eggs, heads of cabbage, sack with potatoes and onions…and I ran to the front door to pull it open and run out of it quicker than I ever had before.
The sun is going down now. Maybe no one will come here to look for me. Already, I can imagine, they are cooking inside. My father and sister. Maybe whispering to each other how nothing they do will help me see things differently. How I will not listen, or grow, or ‘let things go’. How maybe this entire summer has just been a struggle to get me to stop disobeying and crying.
Outside, the sound of cicadas buzzing has gotten louder and they sound like an ominous chanting, reminding me of the past as though every time I had heard them before this meant to warn me of this moment. Now, things were out of control because nothing i could do would change anything.
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On the palms of my hands, the redness became more apparent but the stinging had stopped. At first I felt it more, when I had fallen running toward the barn and then burned them while trying to pull the heavy left door of the barn by myself. I was thirsty at this point, but not hungry. I couldn’t think about food. It was humiliating just to imagine myself sitting and eating something my father had made me. Maybe just a couple of potatoes and a slice of toasted bread, but I would not pick up my fork and just sit there staring down at my lap. In my head I would just hear words I had heard come out of his mouth from my childhood, to my older sister who had: broken picture frames, spilled a bag of flour on the kitchen floor, cut my forehead while trying to trim my hair, and gotten in trouble at school after fighting a classmate.
I had heard his voice and sometimes it would tremble but that would scare me even worse because I knew that even he wasn’t in control anymore. It was only the pain that had been brought into him to then reach to us. It was as if the punishment couldn’t be delivered directly to the child, yet, of learning the consequences of the errors of life. It had to be personally delivered by those who had also germinated the mystical seed of birth.
Maybe I was holding onto my shame. Could I be pretending to be hurt only to escape admitting I was ashamed? Did I feel guilt for my mother dying? Could I understand what she meant, this entire time to my father? And was she as much my mother as my sister’s?
The vase. Ceramic. Ashes all between the tiles, swept up with a dust-pan in both of my sister’s hands. Her right gesturing to me, and my hands flying up to cover my eyes streaming tears as though they were blood. A mouth as open as it could become, screaming and sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” I cried over and over until the words could solidify into a presence so distinct even my mother would hear them.
“I’m sorry,” just became sounds and noises. Like a song that was written by the souls of ships that had been sunken by the storms that would only visited the most fated sailors.
“I’m sorry,” was the only thing I could say, but I wouldn’t clean it up and I couldn’t remember how my sister had told me to not leave the window open. Where in the morning we found, perched above the fireplace, a bluejay with feathers which emanated such splendor that with fear they would cast a permanent trace upon our family living room. One of chaos and lesson, solid and unforgiving.
