a funeral

Who is she?

A new imaginary friend asks as I stare into the coffin. They don’t keep form—sometimes they hover like a hummingbird, or tower like a man, or crawl like a spider—and right now, I can’t feel what they are. They are just there. Just like the coffin. Inside, here is another shape that will not hold. A child. A maiden. A crone.

She is everything. I answer though even I’m not sure what I mean. They know it too, so instead a song called The Wheel by Sohn plays somewhere in the distance to cover the silence:

“I died a week ago...

There’s nothing left.

It’s caught on video.

The very last breath…”

This is all in my head, but most things are.

My friend laughs but I’m not sure at what, and our eyes fill with tears.

What was she like? I haven’t named my friend yet. It will come to me.

She’s from Sorrows too. I begin to recall. But she didn’t believe in a place called home, only in a thing called Love. I laugh because she’d like that joke.

There’s a melancholic tingle and excitement laced worry as I think back to who she was, and I feel like I’ve been told a secret I don’t remember. I’ve been here before, I think.

She had found her religion in the trees and had wanted to be a muse.

A muse? They laugh again which makes me smile. Remembering her feels different from knowing her. There were fewer smiles knowing her.

I think she knew what a muse was in the same way everyone knows what a century is. It may be a hundred years, but how can you know what a hundred years feels like? How could you possibly want to be devoured? I ask her, incredulous still. How did you not know you could be savoured? I know I’ll never get a response and that I don’t really need one.

As least as far as centuries go, you can’t… not until you can feel it in your bones and can tell a hundred years worth of stories. Their voice rumbles in a perfect tenor until they change shape again.

Exactly. She’s a much better artist, anyway.

Did you love her? A velvet goddess whispers. The silences are long here… and words quiver like prayer.

The textures within myself change. I can trace the lines backwards, as if writing a name that in written form is a distinct spiral. Tree rings. A fingerprint. Momentarily, I am somewhere else:

There’s a flashing now as I toss in the crests and dips of the waves. There are bits of awakeness amid the sleepy, weeping lull of wildness. In the flashes, I see earthen tones and floral cathedrals; lush pastels and gnarly anchors. There are bright lights in the crepuscular hue, and what I can only describe as magic.

I’m back looking in the coffin, pondering Love. I wonder, does this new friend ever stop asking questions that split me open like a hatchet does firewood?

I must have loved her with every fibre of my being. I reply at last. But she was voiceless. You know? Back in the day, she could barely order for herself at a restaurant. Oh, and her never-ending search for normalcy drove me mad. She never did find whatever it was she was looking for…

My voice quiets, but continues as I remember more and more. I realize there will never be a eulogy eloquent enough.

She had a penchant for secrets.

There’s one gnawing at you, my friend declares.

I nod. It tickles even now. There must have been something she forgot to tell me before she went.

I think secrets were the vice that stole her voice. They leeched off what they could until she let out the kind of death knell only a banshee could make.

That sounds tough but also, what a badass! Their childlike guffaw fills the space and I scoff.

She was afraid to climb through windows, and of going to the grocery store, and she couldn’t see the magic in the mundane. She wouldn’t leave him and Love was only something with which she could play make believe. Still, she kept going until she knew the mountain and the waves.

And the trees… They added.

And the forest… I agree.

I realize that’s where we are now. Standing among the trees she will always Love sans pretending. Fire encroaches on us just as the realization does: here is where we come to die. The waves deliver us here to redie; we come to unborn and rebore from ashes after wildfire. The fire rages now as I say goodbye.

She’s harsh and judgemental in a haughty way. She had once been described as a sweetheart with an edge which is part of why the forest called to her. I think she learned how to be gentle there. The kind of gentle that taught her to protect herself.

Wild things are allowed to protect themselves. An elephant’s trunk trumpets which jump-starts my heart. There are drums in the distance now, heralding death as the flames inch closer.

Exactly, Aruu. And they can say no in whatever way their body knows.

Are you stalling?

She had needed to escape. Her only option was to become one with the storm and so she had been one with the storm most of her life. It had been woven into her like tapestry. The storm made her a fighter; she saw everything as a battle to win or a point to prove. When she finally teased a part of herself from the raging thunder and lightning, she could finally see the devastation storms leave in their wake. And when she cut the last thread, she unravelled with it. Here she lies now.

There are too many threads of her to piece together. I’m struggling. I answer after another long sigh of a moment.

The fire is almost here, Aruu warns me.

Then it is the fire stalling. I sigh, looking down at her and then gently rub the spot between her eyebrows like her mama used to do.

The thing is, I continue, I don’t think she was a wild thing naturally. I think the storm was the only way she knew how to protect herself, but storms are indiscriminate. How could she see friend from foe with all that fog in her eyes?

How did no one else see all that fog in her eyes?

The same way they couldn’t see how easily the world bruised her. I lean down and kiss each cheek and then her forehead. To her, I say:

You are loved and precious and you deserved to be protected. I’m sorry no one did for so long. You should have been treasured. I’ll treasure you now. I’ll go on for you now.

And what will you take with you? A jaguar purrs the question like it’s amused.

I pause and take a deep breath. I can feel my composure slipping like a silk blindfold.

I will take riding in the car with the music blasting and the windows down, singing into the wind. I’ll take the edge and leave the sweets. I’ll take the bright light and warn other sailors on their way, light the trail through the forest with it too. And Love before the storm comes in.

A different song plays:

“You are my sunshine,

my only sunshine.

You make me happy

when skies are grey.

You’ll never know, dear,

how much I love you…”

The fire reaches us. I place my hand on hers and the tears fall freely now. Behind me, my companion’s voice booms from the beak of an owl:

Here lies the storm-heart muse, Lover of forests and secrets; whose blue tears and cowards feet led her naively—bravely—to her end.

The fire starts to take her, but we are all in the flames.

Together, our hearts sing. They all harmonize.

As the flames engulf us, I look to her.

She’s beautiful. She’s free.

Then we rise with the ash.