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You take to offering to pick him up on the road after you hike in the woods. He hitches himself up on a stone wall and nods in agreement. He looks worn out.

You ask two other couples at a dinner party, if your spouse dies first, what will you do? He says he would have to move. It would be too sad. Someone else says she would crawl into the fetal position for two years.

His mother told you that once, as a young child, when they returned from a vacation, he sat in every chair in the house. When you first heard this, you found it odd, maybe even nerdlike. After years together you have another thought. He wouldn’t exclude anyone, even a chair. You canvas your cutlery and shoes. Could your clothes be waiting respectfully in the closet for your attention?

It’s the time of year for gratitude. He says he’s most grateful for you.

You buy Chips Ahoy and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. You reassure him his weight is perfect. You praise his haircut, or his hair kept long. You take him on an early Christmas shopping spree. You learn to make coffee in the Miele, formerly his solo domain.

You go for your annual checkup and have your blood drawn. You keep the results from him.

You publish a memoir about an ex. He doesn’t want to read it. When it comes out, you receive a Facebook request, and you consent. You don’t tell him.

When you leave the house together, he migrates to the passenger side.

Your mother has breast cancer when you are 27. You become frightened of swine flu and stalk cases like an epidemiologist.

You decide everything, even trees, will die—and you feel relieved. You’re certain to die but not right away, and not from swine flu.

Twenty years later, on the day of your mother’s death, you’re waiting on death vigil 1500 miles away from her. You visit a local wildlife sanctuary to sit in meditation in the woods. Your father is still alive and is at her bedside. It’s been seven excruciating months, and you’ve known her release would come soon. The chickadees and frogs are silent.

You’re deep in meditation when you sense her, although it’s not “her.” No Max Factor face or lacquered nails. You’re afraid for her being forced from her physical form that has obsessed her, yet you’re heartened that she’s managed to get this far. You take this as a sign that anyone can do this dead thing.

She is like a train whistle, hurried and shrill. She’s polite and thanks you for the help you offered, although she admits she didn’t use it. She has more visits to make, and then she’ll be off to do something which sounds like becoming wiser. Her plans seem vague, but you forgive her. She’s very new to this.  And perhaps plans aren’t part of the afterlife. You wish she would linger longer.

Two women, one in a Red Sox T-shirt and another with dark bangs, wait in plush chairs at the medium’s newly renovated home office. They expect news from dead relatives. You are there as an experiment. You’re curious, although you have low expectations. Your husband is skeptical but tolerant.

The medium tells you that you’ve been summoned from different parts of the region. It’s in perfect order that you’re here tonight. You’re flabbergasted. What would the spirit world want with you?

Are you writing, she asks? They’re showing me you’re reading at a podium. Your hair is swept up in a bun and you look very accomplished. It’s on Martha’s Vineyard.

Next, she says many are crowded around the portal, vying for attention. One has shoved through the crowd to the front. You imagine a spirited mob hip-bumping each other as they rush the veil. As you know they are vapor, not flesh, you wonder at the mechanics of this.

Could the afterlife be a repeat of this life, lonely souls desperate to connect?

She asks if one pushy spirit could be your father. She describes his goofy grin, the gap between his front teeth, a spark of mischief in his eye. A woman is with him, but it’s not your mother. You tell her, yes, it seems like him.

Later you seek out another medium to contact your mother.

The woman speaks dispassionately, as though handing over your takeout order, your mother never wanted children. You feel bewildered and vindicated. You say, I told you so, to another part of yourself.

The medium says your mother is already reborn. You ask to see her. She frowns and says that’s not how it works. Her tone is harsh. You feel like a lone pebble in a rushing river.

In a dream, you see your mother in Baltimore. She is pushing an old-style baby carriage. You look at her reflection in a store window as she stops to admire her image. She is dressed in camelhair, her hair is up, her pointed shoes have daggers for high heels. You brush against her sleeve. She doesn’t notice you.

Nothing has changed.

Years later, when you have breast cancer, you must wait six weeks for the physicians to coordinate a treatment plan. You and your husband play Scrabble every night. Creating a new word with every turn is a way to spell yourself to health. Every victory is survival.

He loses every game but never refuses to play.

Just before your mastectomy you ask him to take a picture of your breast.

The last image you see as they wheel you down the hallway is your flowered purse being awkwardly held in his arms.

Afterward you ponder your left breast’s manifest destiny. Each scenario is horrific. Sometimes you see it packaged in brown butcher paper like a corned beef and put out with the trash. Sometimes it’s ground like hamburger. Other times it’s thrown in with all the biowaste and sent to medical heaven.

One day, he suggests you get a dog. You’re surprised because your pre-nuptial had been “NO DOGS!” per his request. His reason is that it would make him happy to see you happy with a dog.

When you bring the puppy home, you snap a picture of the furry white bundle in his lap. When you view it, you see that they have fallen in love.

You’re delighted but angry you wasted time on cats.

When you walk together, he brags about how fast the puppy runs. He admires strength and winning. Although he has never much liked strolling, now he suggests nighttime walks on the rail trail so others will admire them both.

You and he talk about who will go first. He is certain it will be him. He’s older, male, and statistically favored to die first. You imagine who would have more trouble in the absence of the other: He would eat badly. You would worry more without his calm reason. He would be lonelier. You would let the dog in the bed, right away. He would become exhausted as a single-dog parent. You would keep redecorating. Both of you would seek someone else, although he denies this.

You ask for ways he could visit you from the afterlife. Will he help you spot parking places? Will he hold your hand as you get cortisone injections in your foot? Will he stand next to you and watch your daughter get married? Will he walk with you and the dog along the river? You tell him, identify yourself by dropping a pebble into the rushing river.

He agrees to stand at the portal pushing the others away so you can “see” him. It’s the best you can hope for.
 

Eggphrasis

A new collection of poems by Ronnie Hess. Artwork by Mary Sprague.

“Ronnie Hess’s Eggphrasis is a mix of astute and sympathetic observations about her backyard chickens and encounters with wild species, interwoven with her perspectives on life. Her poetry is by turns amusing and poignant, while providing insight into the birds she writes about.” — Anna Pidgeon, Beers-Bascom Professor of Conservation, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Throughout this collection, birds are a delight, a cause for concern, a flock, unique individuals, worthy of attention in and of themselves and for what they sometimes suggest about us humans. These insightful poems present for our regard the narrow and the wide earth and all who find a place here to fly, to walk, to write, and to practice their art.” — Margaret Rozga, author of Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems, and 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate Available from the author at ronniehess.com

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