It was like merging with a compost heap: so calmed by the warmth of the microscopic unseen that you hardly noticed the stench becoming your skin, or remembered why you’d been so hellbent on staying upright in the first place. A grin hints at the corner of your still-soft lips, as you recall with amused compassion – what a grandmother has for the child who believes no one is watching – the tenacious cheek of your belief that a lifetime of resisting gravity would exclude you from arriving exactly here.

We had crossed the border back into Oregon, homecoming after two months of traveling, mostly apart. Our Honda Pilot, which we had just bought last year, held the cloaking silence of a death drawing near, calmy draped over the snacks my mom insisted on sending and our now unnecessary winter gear.

“Can we stop here. I have to pee.”

Two months before we pulled into the parking lot of the Talent rest area, Benito and I were arguing—half-heartedly—on the perfectly manicured lawn that existed where no grass should be: the Phoenix suburbs, where my sister lives.

We were out walking Rosie under a rare desert rain, between the tennis courts and one of three fake lakes at “The Islands”: a faux Floridian paradise with vibrant bugambilias and towering palm trees and streets lined with imported orange trees that bear vibrant fruit too bitter and dry to eat.

“Maybe we should get divorced,” Benito said casually, as raindrops slid down his jacket's lime green and black hood before becoming one with the tiny puddles forming on his shoulders.

“I think we should try therapy first,” I replied, looking neither at nor beyond him, not brave enough to agree through wanting it desperately. “Before we do that to our families.”

—

Marriage is a sacrifice, Maria Franca, my sister-in-law, had told me when she, Reggie, and their young daughter Maria Sophia visited us in August. We were stoned in my front yard, underneath the orange and yellow honeysuckle that climbed toward the eaves. I crumbled into uncontrollable sobs, and would later feel more alarmed by my inability to contain the tender underbelly of my despair than I was by the feelings themselves.

I would also question—silently—why she didn’t tell him the same thing.

—

For months, I’d allow her words to course through me, silk cords encircling the gray-black rock that now occupied the center of my chest. They caressed a now-favored visceral longing: to stand with my back to some riverbank, the water deliciously cold on the skin like the Yaquina or Yachats, soon to merge with the body of moody Pacific.

The rock would fall out, just effortlessly, through the bony corset of my upper spine and rib cage. Splash. Plunk. Sinking down down down until it became one with the riverbed. The cords would tug my submissive body–just so–until I plopped into the river’s embrace. I would float–just my ears underneath the water’s surface at first–to enjoy, for a few moments, hearing no more than the sounds of my last few breaths until the river rocks received me as one of theirs.

—

My eyes turned back to Rosie, her compact muscular body darting from spot to spot in the glistening blades; from Benito to me. “But I want you to schedule the appointment,” I said, another hollow attempt at justice or parity or partnership or–what was I seeking, really? “When we get back in February.”

It was Christmas Eve. In a few days, we would drive to Albuquerque to spend the week and New Year–2020–with my parents before Benito would fly to Montréal for five weeks. Mum and I would then fly back to Phoenix before we’d spend the next three weeks roadtripping through the wet winter of Northern Ireland. There I’d pick up 50 Shades of Gray for two quid at a charity shop in Lurgan, read “The Dead” outloud to mum (she’d fall asleep after two pages, though I’d keep going), and meet three men named Dermot–three more than I’d ever met in my lifetime–in less than a week.

—

“Have ya a torch?” Dermot number three would ask, approaching me in the An Creagán forest mere moments after I’d zipped up my pants.

“I’m sorry, what?” I would ask, distractedly pulling my gloves back on and glancing behind him, calculating whether or not he’d seen me bare bummed and squatting.

“I said ‘have you a torch?’”

“Oh no, I don’t!” I would laugh, into the first whispers of darkness, where fairies build fires and lost souls feel seen and what was or wasn’t or will never be absorbs into the joy and terror of total obscurity.

“American, are ya?”

“Yes.”

“Alone, are ya?”

“Yes.”

“You’re alright love,” he’d say, the inner crooks of our elbows suddenly converging. “This way. Walk with me.”

—

*A rainbow while road tripping with my mum in Northern Ireland - January 2020.*

*Story inspired by Annie Dillard’s ‘Total Eclipse’

The Sacrifice*