\ Bedrock

This, I think, looking at the Jack of Hearts in my right hand, is what it means to stare at the remnants of your former house. And to realize, I observe, pocketing that card as gently as I can, that there were so many inside, depending on you not to let it fall. Squeezing my left hand, I remember, I used to wake up, muster all of my energy to make a fist, feeling not an ounce of strength. This air is so stagnant, it seems, it feels like I have no choice but to pull down the sails, wrap myself up in them, dare the wind to return. The phone rings, I can read the number, but it is a call dialed too quickly, and we have to force the conversation from there on out. Again, I say the wrong thing, backtrack from my words, distance myself from their abrasiveness, try to buttress the upright cards remaining. I could never forgive myself, she answers, if I left you now and then you became a famous writer. I'd be bitter and angry the rest of my life. In the middle of anguish and hopelessness, I find myself back on my heels, laughing at the senselessness of it all, the rigor of the exercise. She calls again, and this, I think, is going to be a day and a night of back and forth, of unsatisfying rests in between uninterrupted fits of sleep. My craft upon these waters is utterly destroyed, at my hands, and somehow, still, pieced back together in a way that is salt- if not sea-worthy. Poor planning, and a taste for misdirection, is what has stalled the gale, too far from shore to swim, too close not to practice the jump. Soon, she says, we will wake from even this, to hands without the early morning strength needed to grasp the oars. We will be saved, not by our own hands, but by our early morning weakness, dragged on into evening.