Lisa Olstein

There is a theory of crying that tears are the body’s way of releasing excess elements from the brain. There is a theory of dreaming that each one serves to mend something torn, like cells of new skin lining up to cover a hole. I’m not one to have dreams about flying, but last week we were thirty feet above the bay—this was where we went to discuss things, so that no matter what we decided it was only we two out there, and we’d have to fly back together. I’m not one to have dreams where animals can speak, but last night a weeping mare I’d been told to bridle wanted me to save her. We discussed what was left of her ability to take children for rides—how much trot, how much canter— but I wasn't sure I could do it, having already bridled her and all. I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once. I boarded a plane before dawn. I carried all those heavy bags. I stayed up the whole night before folding the house into duffel bags. I took a curl from the base of your skull and opened the door to the rusty orange wagon and weighed those heavy duffel bags and smiles at the airport official. I boarded a tiny propeller plane and from a tiny window I watched you walk back to the rusty orange station wagon. They say the whole world is warming by imperceptible degrees. I watched the rusty orange wagon go whizzing by.

Thousands of planes were flying and then they stopped. We spend days moving our eyes across makeshift desks, we sit on a makeshift floor; we prepare for almost nothing that might happen. Early on, distant relations kept calling. Now, nothing: sound of water tippling a seawall. Nothing: sparks lighting the brush, sparks polishing the hail, the flotsam of cars left standing perfectly still. Thud of night bird against night air, there you are on the porch, swath of feathers visible through the glass, there you are on the stairs where the cat fell like a stone because her heart stopped. What have you found in the wind above town square? Is it true that even the statues have gone? Is there really a hush over everything as there used to be in morning when one by one we took off our veils?

What seemed a mystery was in fact a choice. Insert bird for sorrow. What seemed a memory was in fact a dividing line. Insert bird for wind. Insert wind for departure when everyone is standing still. Insert three mountains burning and in three valleys a signal seer seeing a distant light and a signal bearer sprinting to a far-off bell. What seemed a promise was in fact a sigh. What seemed a hot wind, a not quite enough, a forgive me, it has flown away, is in fact. In the meantime we paint the floors red. We stroke the sound of certain names into a fine floss that drifts across our teeth. We stay in the room we share and listen all night to what drifts through the window— dog growl, owl call, a fleet of mosquitoes setting sail, and down the road, the swish of tomorrow’s donkey-threshed grain.

At the London Zoo a toddler falls over the rail of the Primate World only if you close your eyes and a female gorilla comes to sit by, to circle her long dark arm around him only this one time while the others stay away. The zookeeper says she lost a baby earlier this year only just barely and they’ve been waiting months for her tits to dry. The boy’s mother watches from above only when I say so the thirty minutes it takes the right person to lower the right ladder down only as a last resort. In the interim a newscaster whose station carries it live only if you promise not to let go

At first he seemed a child, dirt on his lip and the sun lighting up his hair behind him. All around us, the hesitation of year-rounders who know the warmer air will bring crowds. No one goes to their therapist to talk about how happy they are, but soon I’d be back in the dugout telling my batting coach how the view outside my igloo seemed to be changing, as if the night sky were all the light there is. Now, like two babies reaching through the watery air to touch soft fingers to soft forehead, like blind fish sensing a familiar fluttering in the waves, slowly, by instinct, we became aware. Off-field, outside the park, beyond the gates, something was burning. The smell was everywhere.

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss; everything blooms coldly. I expect you. I thought one night it was you at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs, you in a shiver of light, but each time leaves in wind revealed themselves, the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak. We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove. In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires over which young men and women leapt. June efforts quietly. I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall so even if spring continues to disappoint we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain. I have new gloves and a new hoe. I practice eulogies. He was a hawk with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs of a salamander crossing the old pony post road. Yours is the name the leaves chatter at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

I was on the porch pinching back the lobelia like trimming a great blue head of hair. We’d just planted the near field, the far one the day before. I’d never seen it so clear, so gusty, so overcast, so clear, so calm. They say pearls must be worn or they lose their luster, and that morning I happened to remember, so I put them on for milking, finding some sympathy, I guess, between the two. Usually I don’t sit down until much later in the day. The lobelia was curling in the sun. One by one birds flew off, and that should have been a sign. Trust is made and broken. I hardly sit down at all. It was the time of year for luna moths, but we hadn’t had any yet settling on the porch or hovering above the garden I’d let the wild rose take.