The Remains of My Wife

Yesterday as I drove in slow motion through the Dayworld on a road where the speed limit is only 30 mph, I passed a hulking hunkering dark brown vulture,   perched on a fallen tree trunk just over the still body of one who would now become supper for hundreds of others. In the way these things happen, and no doubt because of where I am in this particular moment, I slipped between the worlds and saw my own body, or more precisely, the body of the one of me who had been married to the Earthquake Man, lying prone beneath the barbed talons and perfectly bare beak of this glorious terrifying death eater. This life giver. I imagined the powerful long bones of me being picked clean, exposed so precisely and brilliantly to the bleaching blazing sun. I imagined the eyes of my married one being plucked out, removed from the sockets that spent so many weeks of the last four years offering salt water to the earth. I imagined her limbs, the limbs of this one of me, being flopped and flipped so the tenderest parts could be devoured and the toughest parts slowly bored into by those whose lineage was made through patience. I imagined my silver-blonde hair being plucked and ripped, then woven in between twigs in the soft nests of nearby robins and jays. I felt the tickling sensation of the smallest ones seeking refuge in the cool dark caverns of my ears and nostrils. I imagined my strong legs being spread, folded, removed and dragged to the nearest tree or perhaps strewn around the field by coyotes who do not like to eat in mixed company.

And finally, I imagine my glorious heart, the heart of my married one, the heart that devoted herself without hesitation, who felt everything despite what the mind was telling her, I imagine this heart being consumed without ceremony by some large charismatic carnivore who would lick his fangs clean of my blood and trot off without so much as a glance back, but in whose veins I would pulse and pound in my own way. And in that moment, that one breathtaking moment, I remember all the love making. All the moments of being devoured in just such a way, though my mind tells me one version of devouring is ‘good’ and one is ‘bad’. And I remember the real story: there is no good or bad. There is only Life. May this day consume us until there is nothing left but the truth of why we are here which is the sum of what we have to offer.