2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) (18 page)

We may last many seasons and cycles of Love
but regardless of the repeated reassurances and truths of the fact
of Love's return, a relationship is so often disposed when the
seasons change. As life changes from one time to the next. As we
age. But there will be snow next year the way there was a sun this
summer. And it is our responsibility to maintain Love's home—the
relationship, the marriage, whatever—while Love is a formless
misunderstanding.

No one believes this. They say, "We do not
have to work at this. We should not have to. If it is true Love."
Strange. Or, "We should not try to do anything; we should just be."
I don't know.

Because yes, I can lie on the grass in
summer and bask in the sun as I would readily bask in Love. Or I
can pile myself in layers of wool and lie down with Love near a
fireplace in winter. But time changes. It is naive to just be. The
summer child must go inside when the chill comes. She must put on
shoes and escape the harsh wind. The winter child must put out the
fire and take off the layers as the heat returns in spring.

And that is the work. The work not of
pleasing each other by continually overextending ourselves. Not of
giving up our precious alone time. Not of indulging each other in
comforts beyond those necessary or of surpassing the needs of each
other, but of getting up off the grass together. Going inside
together. Putting out the fire together. Folding up the sweaters
together. This is the work.

So often I said to another or the other has
said to me, "Come, it's time. The changes are here. We have to
accept them." And between us there's always a fool. Either he or I.
One of us insists on staying out on summer grass that piles high
with snow around our bare feet. Or one of us insists on keeping the
fireplace hot and the wool tight as the heat and humidity return
from their travels.

What would you say to a barefoot man in the
snow? Or the fire-scorched woman in summer?

"You are crazy." "You're a fool." "What in
the hell are you doing?"

Changes come. One person does not inflict
them on the other. Who would ever blame the snow on a child? But we
do this to our young loves. We do not simply prepare ourselves and
our lives for the true changes that come as freely as wind. We
stand like blind fools screaming, blaming, refusing, and
failing.

Love leaves anyway. And love will return
regardless. It is how we wait. It is who we wait with that is the
relationship. Changes come.

I am not afraid of the first snow. Are you?
I am not even afraid of thick blizzards and blinding drifts. Are
you? I know I will survive in my home. I know this as much as I
know the sun will rise. Why do we distrust our relationships?

And why when the relationship, as a home for
Love, needs maintenance or repair does someone so often slap the
tools from my hand? Always with the same words, "Love will survive
anyway if it is true love."

I laugh at this. Of course it will. It has
no survival. It is the wind and rain and snow and sun and dry air
and rising heat. Love will survive. But will we?

Will we survive the changes? If I see a
crack here under the window, which was fine in the summer when we
needed a little more breeze, when will it be fixed? I begin to
fidget, to question and complain. In winter the cold should be kept
out. It only makes sense. The breeze will be a wind. And snow
packed in the crack will freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw, and
could conceivably wreck this house around us.

“
No, that's stupid. It
doesn't matter."

Are you really that self-destructive? Are
you really that blind to what Love and these other emotions can do
to us? They can shred us. They can kill us. Don't you understand
that?

Already with those last words the crack has
grown. The house will fall and each of us, he and I, will wander
aimless in our blanched-sight brutal exposure. We will be lost,
delirious, and will walk in slow circles around the fallen
else.

When the season changes again and Love
returns, as always happens, there will be no house. No
relationship. No people left sharing it. And Love will sit down
there, where that house used to be, looking hopeful, with searching
eyes on the horizon, and she will settle down into a quiet grave as
she has done before so many times. Because she is gravity, earth,
time, and the constant change from life to death and death to
life.

Cry if you want. You fool. But she is
simple. Love is understandable. It is we who you should worry
about. Crying over Love as though her death is a tragedy. No more a
tragedy than those houses built without heed to the fault lines
beneath them. We know how to build houses that stand through
earthquakes but we don't. There is no tragedy then when we cry,
except of our own foolishness. Be sure that she is crying for you
because she knows and understands that loneliness is far, far worse
than any of her stupid deaths.

BURN VICTIM

We talked about each other's armor but
tonight I see you, young child, without flesh, stripped from your
dressed-up world. Every tough painful thing is too close and I know
my kisses will infect you. So I keep my lips away from sore,
pulsing, raw, bleeding, open-sore flesh. You’re still here, so
close, sleeping burnt in my arms. But I’m without protection from
your screaming for skin. Why do you insist that I spend my life
getting pretty? Pretty exhausted with a white-toothed smile. Pretty
tomorrow with nothing to say. Pretty much heartless but surrounded
by mirror-skin that leaves the healed curtains open for the
pretty-watch-me day.

ORDERLY

Here I am at the end of a wonderful life.
And this is the way I want things. I still look pretty good for my
age. Must have been all the years of laughing with my husband. He
is doddering around here somewhere and I am enjoying a few minutes
of sunlight on the back porch. There is a warbler in the cherry
tree and I can almost see all the springs with their warblers
passing through.

My husband has just come into the room but
seems to have forgotten something and is leaving again. I am
smiling at his frail intensity and remembering all the years we've
shared as the sun filters onto the lawn.

He's back now. Satisfied by whatever
accomplishment he made. There is no evidence of whatever it was,
but he kisses me on the top of my head and pats my shoulder with an
arthritic hand. And as if any activity might be superior to
stillness he moves around behind me and draws the blinds so that
the sunlight is no longer with us, blinding.

I would rather have enjoyed the sun—its
warmth and emboldened light—for another hour. But it is no matter.
He leans on my shoulder and strains to turn on a lamp next to me.
It is what he wants me to want. It is the way I will likely want
things in an hour when the warmth and boldness of my golden lawn
have disappeared into the blue-gray garage shadow.

My husband does not notice sunsets. He cares
about what time it is and tends to my evening, as is his habit. He
is concentrating and too distracted to take my hand as he offers me
nothing in particular but assures that my book, my newspaper, my
basket of knitting, the remote for the television, a card from our
granddaughter, and my teacup are all within easy reach. They are
all here, all the choices I could ever call out for him to come and
find.

I stare at the drawn blind, hating the
lamplight.

Satisfied with my well-being, he trots off
again to busy himself in another room.

ABOUT
THE ON IMPULSE EBOOK SERIES

On Impulse Series Titles:

The War is Language: 101 Short Works

2000 Deciduous Trees: Memories of a Zine

Love & Darts

How to Cherish the Grief-Stricken

About the On Impulse eBook Series:

We each have an impulse to
share our experience. These four collections of short works explore
storytelling from catharsis to craft. Over the course of this
series Nath Jones's writing style develops from the raw,
associative, tyrannic rambles of cathartic non-fiction, flash
fiction, and rant in
The War is
Language
and our digital domains, to the
delightful rough-hewn vignettes of
2000
Deciduous Trees
, into the compact
characterizations of the fictionalized tellings in
Love & Darts
, and
finally toward
How to Cherish the
Grief-Stricken
's fully-crafted short
stories that use literary devices and narrative elements to reveal
a world well-rendered.

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

Nath Jones received an MFA in creative writing
from Northwestern University where she was a nominee for the Best
New American Voices 2010. Her publishing credits include
PANK Magazine
,
There Are No Rules
,
The Battered
Suitcase
, and
Sailing World
. Her current e-book
series,
On Impulse
, explores the spectrum of narrative from catharsis to craft.
She lives and writes in Chicago.

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