Prose

16 Screws

Prose

It’s weird. I’ve talked to you more in the past week than I have the past six months. Getting an uninitiated text from you was a strange occasion.

I guess that’s what happens when you have nothing but 18 hours of TV, time, and self-administered pain meds.

She called me on Tuesday. The way she began the conversation had me concerned. Dancing around the subject for a little too long.

“He finally went to the doctor. His sister made him promise, so he finally did it…they took an MRI and found that his vertebrae had fused together…he couldn’t lift his head at all, pain was too much…Dr. Ostrup said he could perform the surgery this Friday…they haven’t decided if they’re going in through the front or the back…there are the usual complications and risks, and then there are others. Like C5 Palsy, which makes it so you can’t lift your arms…yes, he’s going to do it…okay, love you too.”

Friday arrived unceremoniously – or as unceremonious as a Friday can be. People are always in good spirits. Always like to talk about how it’s Friday. What else can you say?

She sent us updates throughout the surgery and the recovery. She was our eyes and our worries. She was our telescope into your fragile universe, our cardboard tube into your imaginary world, hanging on a thread as thick as a spinal cord.

I don’t love that you had to get that surgery. But I did love how much you talked to me. I loved the neediness of your conversations. The sentences that lasted just a beat extra because you didn’t want to hang up. The jokes—self-conscious at first—lumped in a silly mass on top of the connection that had always been traced there but never filled in.

The surgeon put 16 screws in his neck to give the vertebrae room to breathe and move. To take the pressure off. 16 screws!

When he came home, I was there. I hugged him gently and rushed to grab a cold Coke and straw from the kitchen.

You shuffled your way across the family room, briefly brushing by the hellos and how are yous. You were on a mission to the sun. I could tell that you had been thinking about this moment for a while. As soon as you sat down, time slowed for you. And the buttery warmth of the Autumn sunshine fell upon your face.

single hibiscus with black and white and trippy effect

George Floyd

Prose

It’s May 25th.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store. George Floyd pays for a pack of cigarettes with a 20. George Floyd walks out of the convenience store. He sits in his car with a friend. Maybe lights one up. Maybe just talks.

The store clerks come to his car. They tell him the 20 was fake.

The cops show up. Cop on the driver’s side pulls his gun. Cop on the driver’s side reholsters his gun. More cops show up.

George Floyd is dragged out of the driver’s side. He looks heavy. Clumsy. He is walked to the cop car and packed into the backseat. He is claustrophobic.

George Floyd falls out the other side of the cop car. His head hits the ground first. He is handcuffed. He cannot get up. The officers surround him. Things get lost. Things get hazy. Things get wrong.

Derek Chauvin casually holds his knee and whole body against George Floyd’s neck. His hand is in his pocket. He taunts George Floyd.

Get in the car.

I can’t.

Minute 1.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 2.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 3.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 4.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 5.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 6.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 7.

I can’t breathe.

Minute 8.

I. Can’t. Breathe.

Standers-by are held in place by Tou Thau, who stands in front of the scene like a dog guarding its food. Still, they yell, they plead, they record the whole thing.

Check his pulse!

The ambulance arrives. EMTs quickly load George Floyd into the back of the vehicle. A firetruck arrives to offer extra support, but cannot find the ambulance.

George Floyd is gone.

Minneapolis is on fire. Outrage and sadness fill the streets and surge through the arteries of the mainstream media until the heart of our country finally explodes, bleeds and bleeds with centuries of the honest-to-God wrongs our fathers and forefathers taught us to justify.

We are bleeding and it hurts and it’s what we need.

We treat America’s history like it’s not ours anymore. Like it is something we used to have but gave up a long time ago. These past few days, we have been reminded of who we really are because of where we truly came from.

Greed. Oppression. Racism.

Protests are happening everywhere. Some stay peaceful and some turn violent. It takes mutation and mistakes to evolve, and that can be painful sometimes. Our Instagram-filtered vision has been ripped cleanly from our eyes.

There are rumors that white supremecists are organizing some of the protests. People are leaving their homes. Fathers are sitting by their doors, guns loaded.

It is so hard to un-ignore the parts of our past that make us feel bad. Don’t we know that doing so is the only way to change?

It’s June 3rd.

I sit with a ball of tears in the back of my throat. I feel ignorant and I feel scared. How does this all feel surprising and not surprising at the same time?

I think about my Black friends, and how their lives were probably a lot different than mine. I think about their fear. Their pain. Their unchosen acceptance of the constant discrimination. Born into a blind world that pretends its eyes are wide open.

Unfair. Unjust. Unsettling.

The sheer fabric of the country is collapsing in on itself. It is unraveling and a new story is being woven – a story that is knotted with the darkest threads of our past and dyed with the blood of the oppressed. A true story.

George Floyd walks into a convenience store and changes the world.

nasturtiums with trippy effect

Not Much Different

Prose

We haven’t slept together the whole month of November. And I’m starting to dream about what it feels like when you hold me.

In between alarms this morning, some version of you came to me and woke me up. I could feel your body, yes. But I could even feel your Feelings.

I could feel the love, as cliché as that sounds.

The way you cradled my head and propped the pillow up behind me was so sweet. I suppose it’s not much different when you’re actually around.

yellow sorrels in bloom with trippy effect - photo by Tierney Brannigan

Windy Hike

Prose

As I wended my way along the green edge of the North Clevenger Canyon Trail, I felt very alone and very safe. I was accompanied only by two California condors, floating above the mountainous expanse like a leaf on water. At one point, one of the black-feathered, red-headed birds flew no more than 10 feet above me; in command of all of that space, and he chose to fly by for a closer look. A quick hello.

Of course, and sadly, the first thing I’m thinking is “PICTURE. INSTAGRAM. MUST SHOW PEOPLE.” But just as soon as I’d taken my eyes off the condor to reach for my phone, he was already on to the next piece of life—or death—that might interest him, and certainly too far for an iPhone 7 camera to capture.

It was a windy day. At first, I thought the sound of the gusts was coming from the 78 freeway below, but when I looked, there were no cars on the road. The way the rolling breeze picked up leaves and branches as it sped along the mountainside created beautiful and at times startling waves of green, occasionally giving the impression that an animal was moving through the wispy tendrils of the grassy landscape. I passed only four or five clusters of one plant in particular, that was probably more of a tree than a bush. They were about five feet tall with smooth bark and small white flowers, holding lonely to the branches that had shed their autumnal leaves. As the wind shook these clusters of small trees, the sound was like that of a ship on a quiet sea. Creaking. Clicking. Lurching. It was calming and slightly eerie.

At one point, as the wind rushed all around me, filling my brain and my being with brightness and lightness, I threw my arms out and closed my eyes and smiled a genuine smile in full ecstasy. I didn’t feel like a human with a car, and a job, and an apartment, and a boyfriend, and bills, and a credit card, and all those other things that tend to set us apart from nature. I was with nature, fully and feeling complete.