I always felt that living next to you, sitting next to you, walking next to you was never close enough to you. I felt if I could live inside of you, that would start to feel close enough to you. I wanted to sit on the subtle slope of your eyelid, holding onto your long lashes while looking out. Climb up to the soft tissue of your brain and see how those gears were turning. I wanted to run down the spiral staircase of your muscular arms and tangled tendons, sitting with my legs dangling at the base of your palm while your fingers ran along the brass strings of your guitar. I wanted to feel that from the inside of you, feel how your nervous system flowed in vibrational harmony with that instrument you deeply loved. I wanted to take a nap in the pocket of warmth in your underarm so your arm would always be around me. I wanted to hear the echo of your laugh from the inside of you and feel what your smile felt like while I hung on to your back molars dodging the pockets of sweet and bitter roughness of your tongue. My logic was such, if I felt safest, happiest, right next to you, I wondered if I would feel absolutely free inside of you. Could there even be such a feeling to feel? 

While living inside of you, I would have signed up for the night shift and watched over your bile ducts while you slept. I would have swept every bend tirelessly so the malignant cells could not bond and gather, multiply.  I would have kept the light on so no riff-raff wanted to come around. I would have planted the sweetest garden within you making sure the soil was rich, instead of rubble. I would have worked my hardest on-site to keep your body healthy and whole. I would not have interfered other than that, as I only wanted to observe you observing the world around you. I only wanted to experience every bit of all of you. I only wanted you to live.

I still see the thick black flood that rushed up your esophagus like we had struck barrels and barrels of oil after the foundation of your body began rumbling, shaking, quaking and your skeletal system followed the sway.  I rushed to you as your head twitched and seized, figuring your body's earthquake had caused the rupture of the oil spill, rushing out like it was dying to finally be free. Crude fluid cascading through your once strong and structured chest, spilling into the new spaces between your teeth from your shrunken gums, running, escaping out of your mouth and nostrils.  Black everywhere. Black stained everything. Pouring out of you, onto you, all over you to the soundtrack of me screaming. Gasping. Hoping and begging that this wasn’t really happening. 

Shortly after our natural disaster whenever I was alone in any room for any amount of time at all, aftershocks would instantly erupt in the vacant space around me replaying the scene of your body breaking down. The tighter I held on to the nearest thing next to me the more the ground would shake, more black would spill, staining everything it rushed over.  As I laid down to close my eyes at night your rupture would freeze frame until I opened my eyes the next morning. I once thought the projector broke or that my prayers had been answered when I noticed the loop wouldn’t play for me anymore, even if I tried to make it. I realized with any trauma that lives within, one cannot ask it over, it will come when it’s ready, often in the most inconvenient times.  Like recently, while driving to the elementary school, I suddenly noticed the road and clouds began merging into one giant screen replaying a blue and white monochrome quake version of you. I jerked my head from side to side and squeezed my eyes open and closed, pushing this uninvited trauma visitation away, but nothing worked as the scene of you was already burned into the sky. I kept driving, weeping, so I wouldn't miss my ten minute parent teacher conference for our son. Reality, if there is still such a thing, is I was no longer driving, merely existing in a blur. Upright in a pleather seat with four large rubber circles rolling underneath me on the bumpiest road to an empty school ground parking lot. A large body with a warm smile invited me to sit next to her at a very small table with very small chairs and I thought of as many questions from the both of us as I could to ask her, even still, we finished before the ten minutes were up. 

I know it probably never once crossed your mind to live inside of me the way I wanted to live inside of you, to experience the world the way I do, but I believe that is one of the many places you live now.  Within me constantly, speaking to me, answering me,  warming me, holding me tight on the days I need it most, filling my lungs when I could easily forget to, closing my eyes in hopes I get enough rest, pumping my heart so I get another day, softening my brow while turning the corners of my mouth up just a little - for the kids!, holding on to my back molars and dodging the sweet, sour, bitter roughness of my tongue as a laugh surprises me and rushes out, orchestrating and cueing a small sparkle in the darkest parts of my eyes from time to time. I hope you’ll plant a garden within me too, I trust you’ll get around to it.

*Video courtesy W+A Hammond from Tok, Alaska while viewing the bridge mountain range between the Wrangell Mountains and the Alaska Range.
Music “Rt 2 Blues” by Rob Laakso / RAW BELL.
Alaska is the only state Rob never made it to but it was on our list visit soon.

Thank you for reading. <3