Still Life No. 597



I am twenty-four, belly-up on
the edge of my bed.  Behind half-
closed lids, I imagine dying
in one way which has outlasted
the rest.  Taking a blanket and
a bottle of water, I trek to the
nearby foothills.  Trails wind
between the gradual lumps and dips,
and off the trails, knee-high grass
covers for miles.  In places, gorges
meander, little leafy trees cast shade
on moss-grown trunks and spiderweb
meshes; other places, savannah trees
arch over chittering squirrels.  Under
such a canopy, I spread out my blanket
and lie down.  This is the true test
of dying, against natural decay and
dehydration.  If I am serious, then
not even the very physical, slow
reminder of death will stop me.

     Will they know if any of this 
happens?  My lover learns about this
incident after I am dead for days from
the police, who have sought me since the
disappearance.  He breaks into grief and
thumps his head against the wall, plotting
more death; I knew this.  My mother cries, 
with more despair than before, since she has
grown accustomed to my strange existence.  My
father is cursing what a waste of life and money,
but even he tears.  My friends are speaking
elegies as I rise above them, drifting towards
the afterlife.  I imagine what people say, if
they remark that I seemed hateful and isolate, 
cunning and unremorseful, cold and forgetful.

     I have lain indoors for days, refusing 
to get up, brooding on a bed of ends, practicing
for the last day.  What ticks me into action
is an event like any other.  Perhaps my lover
argues with me and says we are over.  At times, 
the drones in bureaucracies shuffle my life
like their papers.  Often, those with an ugly 
crease in their souls attempt to grab so much 
that the world bends, their neighbors tumble 
into a gorge.  Instead, the four horsemen stalk 
the country and no one turns a head.  Moreover, a
host of contradictions lie within my life, as I
drift towards the comfortable grave we all carve out.

     Now, I do not know that age will strengthen
the self.



--jennifer crystal chien