Quite Comfortable In This Coma

Sandy was asleep on the love seat, the baby was on the floor, and I sat like an Indian, breaking tiny sticks into the fireplace, building a teepee. Faith/satisfied that it would succeed, I kept pulling from a box of matches trying to spark the twigs, but No luck. Down to my last one, I Finally jammed a twisted newspaper under the wood, striking my last hope with confidence of a king and caught a real spark. I started Blowing on it, trying to cool soup. The flames from the paper wrapped around the little branches and ate at the meat of their limbs. Success, I turned my head and smiled at the baby.

‘Damn, I never got to read that paper’, talking to the fire. no one else was listening. I turned back to look at the tiny human siting like a stuffed bear a few feet away. Her head bobbing like a tired drunk. My eyes rolled over to see Sandy. She was curled on her side, her knees pointed to her chest so she could fit herself on the tiny sofa. She didn’t look comfortable, but her face lacked tension. She was unconscious and/or near death, so I didn’t have a real reason to wake her. She slept lovely. Staring at her, though a pain came over me. I wanted to yell at her for the first time in days. Ever since I found out she had cheated on me. Part of me never wanted to let her rest again, but I shouldn’t be mad at her at this moment. I hadn’t told her I knew yet, and I wanted this little reprieve from our exhausting existences in this prison of a life to be pleasant. So, I bit my tongue. The silence of the room seemed to allay these unwelcomed feelings. I wasn’t even sure if I would bring it up. I was always Reticent of any real conflict. I didn’t enjoy it like some people did. I told myself, ‘It had happened months ago’, and from what I gathered was just ‘moments of weakness’, and it was over now. But my ego needed more. We married for the sake of the baby, both of us being from homes built on fault lines, we knew of natural disasters we didn’t want the baby to know of.

I guess we loved each other. I know she loves me. Well, I think she loves me. Does she say she loves me? I was hurt, but how bad? Could I forgive her? Would I have to? I couldn’t be too mad; sex is not love, always. I should feel like a Christian being torn apart by a lion inside, but If I’m honest, I was only slightly hurt. I cannot deny my pathologies. But nothing seems to mean much of anything to me. I’m not sure if it ever did. I can’t take anything personal. You can’t count on anybody, ‘I thought to myself’ and then looked back to the baby and was overcome with odd calm. I loved her, but I knew, no one could save me.

I turned back to the fire which had worked its way thru the bones of the wood and into the hollow that would warm this room and allow us to relax and move our way up the pyramid of needs. I rolled back from my toes to my heels landing on my butt, holding my hands out like gymnast balancing a landing. I guided myself down till my elbows could rest on the floor. I laid back staring at the fire. The hearth poured sunlight, brightening the room. The heat and light baking/baked my face. The heat invited me to close my eyes. I poked my socked foot into the fire, knocking over a log, reorganizing the flames. I could feel the fire touch my skin, so I pulled out my foot to safety. Inside My head, a machine started up. I felt a pounding of the railroads being built across the western states in my brain. I thought about a drink, I thought about a pill, but I decided to just take a few deep breathes.1…2…3… I exhaled, and slowly opened up my eyes. Like magic, the baby was there, inches away from my face staring at me like a painting. Her eyes were big marbles burnt fire brown outlined with a midnight moon. I hoped they would stay like that forever. She had crawled herself over here to me, still resting on her hands and knees, just staring, looking deep into my eyes, thru me. A deep uncanny gaze of nothingness. ‘What baby?’ I said to her in the same sarcastic tone I would for the next so many forevers till one of us had died. ‘What?’ I breathed at her. she sat like a porcelain dog, not moving an atom of herself. My eyes sank and i leaned in slowly trying softly to touch my forehead to hers. I bumped her and She crashed straight down, like a building filled with dynamite. She laid on her chest, a table whose legs had been knocked away. I reached down with one hand and picked her back up to her hands and knees waiting for her body to tell me it was ok to pull away my hands. She looked back to my face and smiled, not tear of shock or disappointment. This made me happy and filled me with the idea that she would always be ok. I leaned in again this time keeping my eyes open and kissed her on her tiny lips. She cooed, filling her ruddy checks like balloons.

The fire popped as the wet wood hissed, I sat up to move the logs again, I watched the fire, my ears still ringing when there came a knock on the cabin door. How odd, the thought appeared, we were in the woods, in an old cabin, loaned to me by a friend, miles from any other kind of humanity. I set still, thinking my silence would somehow reveal more about who was making the noise outside the door. Another 3 knocks came from the door. It sounded like soft knuckles, not a pounding fist, a warm knock that eased my tension. I rolled up to my feet, my head spinning like a carousel and walked to the door. The baby’s head followed me like a camera but there was no film inside, there would be no need to remember this.

I grabbed the bitter doorknob and pulled it open. On the old porch, bending the boards below, filling my picture full, stood a real life, baby elephant. Sandy gray and corporal, larger than any animal I had ever seen. I was so surprised with shock that I stood still as a mannequin. I couldn’t blink a muscle and my mind went silent, even the pounding went away. Its eyes were friend eggs staring right at me, deep into me, another vison of sanguine fire being doused into a tank of water, just as my baby girl had looked at me. I was so tired, my emotions had too many synonyms to be called honest or to sort out at the moment, so I just stared straight ahead. It’s two ears raised on each side, each like half a heart. Not a thought of what, why, or how this was happening. I could only feel the wind. The crisp air broke like burnt toast. I came to out of this quick coma of to see its trunk rise from its head and reach out toward my left hand. It was holding something. In his lips he held a bright yellow flower. He reached out and paused it in front of me, waiting for me to raise my arm. I offered my hand and opened up my palm. It lowered its trunk, placing a bright, large marigold into my hand. It raised its trunk and petted me on the shoulder 4 times and then pulled back curling it up under his chin. I closed my fingers making a fist and trapping the peddles between my fingers clutching, crushing it tightly, as tight as my cold muscles could. I only knew the name of two flowers, roses and this one, and I always hated roses. I was still in too much awe to debate the symbolism with myself or see any magic. I had always endured (but rarely embraced). I decided to just shut up, shut off and be

My mind started working again and running thru fields of ideas. Abstract thoughts crashed thru my walls of reality. No one will believe this, I don’t (know if I) believe this, I fought of the laundry list of logical questions and tried to stay still and experience the experience. Singular and special. No thoughts needed. I didn’t think of drink, or of pills, not even of breath. I woke from this deep gaze; my whole body was mid shiver from the frozen winter night outside. snow was making its way onto the floor right inside the door. My body gained senses. They had made their importance known to me. As I was about to pull my fist back to my body and tried to think of something to say, it raised its head, closed its lids, took two steps backwards, turned and walked back off the porch and out into the static snow. I wanted to shout for it to stop but no sound seemed possible or necessary. As it marched off, it seemed to grow smaller, I stepped out of the door, face pale and numb, and watched it shrink back out the way it came. That same odd calm came over me as before. I took a few steps out into the fresh snow, stopping to stand in one of the tiniest footprints a beast that size could make and begun to cry. The first time since I can’t remember. ‘God, life is beautiful’, the words flew by in my mind like a banner from a plane. It had made it to the edge of a set of trees, now tiny as a kitten and kept going. the shower of snow kept coming down. It finally pierced the tiny forest and disappeared into the cosmos, home to earth, to live for nothing.

My socks were soaked, toes were numb, and I my hand held a frozen flower. All the feelings were coming back to my body, every degree approaching zero was felt in my limbs. I headed back inside. When I looked up to open door, I saw my baby girl at the doorstep, the light from the fire inside jumped behind her, making her shadow the size of a monster. Wobbling on all fours like a calf learning to stand, waiting for me at the threshold. Smiling, drooling an icicle from her lips, eyes as big as planets filming me having a life’s truly interesting, honest moment. I didn’t care if it was true, nor would probably I tell anybody. Another secret I would hide deep. I hurried in, picked her up in my arm. Her warm little body bringing life to mine. I pushed the door shut with the back of my foot and headed over to the fireplace. The flames barley burped or bounced off the logs anymore, but the red ambers poured heat, instantly reviving me. Lividity left my limbs. I sat the baby in my lap, tossed the crushed flower on the floor and took off my heavily soaked socks, tossing them on the logs. I put a foot in and let the hair on my toes be singed off before I pulled them back out. I felt every corpuscle in my body vibrate. I wondered if I was still alive.

Wiping ice from my face, I glanced back at the wife and felt love. I was content with my type of suffering. Now, I could use a drink.