The Sea of No Future

jen besemer

My mother is the sound of derisive laughter, my father is a gunshot.  I am the crust of bread left on the table after the guests are gone, or perhaps—sometimes—I am the lost bicycle of autumn found at the bottom of spring’s ravine.  In either case I am, how do you say it, flotsam or jetsam.  That which is thrown overboard, that which is overbalanced, topheavy, that which is fallen.

No.  And again, no.  I reject this present tense because I am no longer a shipwreck nor a wreck of any kind.  No bruises darken my jaw, no scars slender as night glove my wrists or decorate my throat, and my long strand of bright freshwater pills has been buried for months.  Oh, loss.  That I could have pined for even these things, imagine, pined for my own doom.  But I did pine and now I turn away and disappear.  The present tense is imprecise but it still shines in its hazy way.

Time has a luminous quality, haven’t you noticed?  What we call the past, what has already happened to us and entered our notice, is illuminated with a clarity in which we can take no active part.  That is to say that today is the land of cloud and shadow, but yesterday comes to us with sharp outlines and a follow-spot which makes certain that we recall even the most horrific experiences with clearer vision than what we bring to our morning mirror meetings with ourselves.  I’m not talking about history, I’m talking about memory.  How the mind makes memory into history is no puzzle, but that’s not my concern.  It’s just that even I succumb sometimes to the temptation to shut myself off from the things I have done, and that which has been done to me, calling it the past.  What is this “past” we talk about like a family plot in the cemetery?  We point it out to others as though proud of it:  “Well, there was a girl I knew once whose legs were as long and smooth as the sky before daybreak, but that was a long time ago.”  Oh yes, we say, nodding at the well-kept grave.  Why make that distinction?  There still exists, undeniably, a girl whose legs are as long and smooth as the sky before daybreak.  Does it matter whether we recognize her or not?  She maintains herself quite well without our attempts to place her forever behind us.

Earlier I rejected the present as imprecise and I insisted that I am no longer a crust of bread or a broken bicycle.  That may be true; the point is that I am not primarily a broken or a devoured thing, though I have spent a great deal of energy already in functioning (if you can call it that) in the manner of such things.  That life does not suit me today and I allow it to remain ill-suited to me.

A way to talk, removed from time—that’s what I need.  Living this way is easier than discussion of this life.  What came before may very well be what comes tomorrow and so be it, since tomorrow is also yesterday.  We humans are so well-organized, look at us counting suns on our wee fingers!  How adorable.

I’m not here to tell a story, but perhaps that too is beside the point.
•••
There is a woman now living who, as a young girl, had legs as long and smooth as the sky before daybreak.  I loved her secretly and desperately when we were both young girls and it’s true I love her still, wherever she is.  I know that her hair is still soft and straight and shines like the tailfeather of a crow.  I see her now walking on a northern beach in the dusk and we are talking about taking a nude night swim.  We are restless in foot but strong in heart and we step on lacy waves as they throw themselves before us.  We walk in slow joy and there is nothing, apparently, that can separate us.

The fact that we are apart in this today is not relevant to us as we walk the sand.  The fact of our shrieks of battle and enmity over various tomorrows has not yet entered our present.  We are still waiting for night to fall.  We are still waiting to peel our ragged summer clothes from our skins and wade into the inland sea.

She is tanned and slim with broad hips, her arms graceful.  She has tied back her shoulder-length hair.  We are both fifteen years old.  My body is smaller, rounder, my belly soft.  My hair is pale and so wild I often find myself sitting on it rather than on chairs or blankets.  It blows behind me as we walk.  My hands are very small and they itch to touch her.

In the night’s waves we swim out to a floating platform in the distance and rest our arms on it, staying in the warm embrace of the water because the air is cool and our clothes are far away, still in yesterday or the day before, and we look at the lights on the shore.  Where is our cottage?  We might as well ask when.  It too is still stuck in yesterday and we float in black water away from any present but ourselves.

What I would like is to swim to her and take her in my arms.  I would like to give her my mouth and breathe into her the dream of the futureless sea which pulls us further from the shore of what we believe we know.  I would like to make love to her in the waves which could never, in that circumstance, allow us to drown.  But I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know how, and at that time it is very important to both of us to always know how.

Her name is Lydia and she is more beautiful to me than a thousand seas of no future.
•••
When I introduce myself to you I leave my name for last.  It is the least relevant thing about me.  What name would you give the daughter of a gunshot and a mocking laugh?  The ground in which I have grown is rich and fertile with decayed matter.  You could call me Rose or Daisy and you wouldn’t be wrong.  What I call myself is never what others call me.

In my heart there is a room.  In this room there is a bed and in that bed we lie together with our legs entwined and our breath vibrant.  Our hands move like fish and we sing quietly.  In this bed in this room in this heart I make the necessary arrangements for a life out of time.  Not a life I’d have preferred, no, just another version of the constructed edifice of the seen.  Doors leading to doors, opening valves in the heart through which we flow.  Doors which do not lock.

I make this room, I make room for you, I pull you through.  Or I want to pull you through but I hesitate.  And in that hesitation you recede, still distant.  Why will we leave each other and never return?  Why are we standing in opposite corners of the room now thinking of murder and suicide?  Why do we hate each other suddenly in the dimming light of cold evening, in the slick shadows sliding down the walls?  The shadows cover our bodies and we fade from each other and are lost.  How much grief have we caused—how much have I hurt you, my dear one?

I leave the room.  I go out walking in my beloved city.  You are not with me.  You are nowhere near here.  I see a woman with a dog, she looks nothing like you, but when she and her dog reach the street a smaller dog in the yard she just left comes to the gate and laments in the voice of a dolphin.  This dog leaps up, still chattering, and scales the gate.  It is about to go over the top when the woman squeals a name in the same voice and rushes back to it.  I am laughing because I see myself in that dog, squeaking and struggling after you, over the bars of time and distance.  Memory, the canvas bucket that carries me.  I am trying to cross the street, to keep going, and in the middle is a blind man standing immobile in front of a car as traffic flows around him.  Another woman, who does resemble you, is trying to help him across the street, and he fights her.  He is also me.  I stop laughing.

Now Lydia and I are in the park and the autumn leaves heap themselves around us like the waves and we swim in them.  She in her grey sweater and red scarf, I in my threadbare tailcoat and black beret, leaves in our pants, in our mouths.  I bury her in leaves and she pulls me down on top of her and in that moment I could kiss her, but I don’t.

We dance before the stage and the band watches us as the audience watches us.  Later the singer asks us if we’d like to be in a film.  Lydia demurs.  I embrace this even though it does not come to pass.
•••
Someone is telling me now that I should say what really happened.  Isn’t it obvious that this is what happened?  I make the room, it exists and we are in it, I make the bed and we are there as well, and who can tell if that is less real than leaves or waves or dancers on the grass?  In my heart it all comes down to the bed and the world pivots on the bedpost and yet perhaps that is not the actual turning point.

You see, there are so many worlds, and doors that do not lock which lead to rooms full of beds.  In one of those worlds Lydia and I walk together in this city, my home, and it is her home too.  We take a bus to the pier and we ride the Ferris wheel and are stuck at the top.  And we hold each other tightly, half-afraid and half-amazed, as the tourists coo and shout.  And in that shining brilliant moment we kiss for the first time again and again as the tourists cheer.  The sky opens up for us, it’s only another door, and we go through.

***

jen besemer is a faculty member at Wright College and Columbia College Chicago. Known primarily for her visual art, poetry and criticism, jen is also one of the Lucky Seven Poets. She finds dialogue unwieldy. "The Sea of No Future" is her first fiction publication.