Smoke

Hearing the news that he was dead didn’t surprise me. It surprised me that his body washed up somewhere before it floated out to sea or came apart and got lost in the way that bodies can underwater. I flinched when I thought of it. This is a consequence of the things I have done over the years that have acquainted me with the way people come apart, both literally and figuratively. It bothers me that the first image in my head when I read the news is of slipping skin, water logged flesh, and of the gruesome mechanics of getting him somewhere without his breaking apart any more.

I secretly hope that his wife won’t want to see his body, although I know she will. I would want to see even the worst of someone I loved, just for that slight hope in me that I would see something left of them there. But there never is anything left and I know that, so I spend my day hoping that maybe someone will have told her don’t look, there’s nothing of him to remember in this slipping skin.

I try not to think about it so much because I know I will have nightmares about water deaths, in every bloated variation that the dark place in my brain somehow manufactures from the things I’ve known and never quite forgotten. I try not to think about the sort of despair that would lead someone to leave this sort of memory for his children. I curse his cowardice at not trying harder. Even as I do this, I know that sometimes people do try harder and it’s simply not enough in the end to save them from their demons. So the monster spreads itself like smoke in our nostrils, and I will have dreams of floating bodies and fatherless little boys.