flum

“I fumbled in my pockets for my father’s map. I stared and rubbed the paper between my fingers. I read the sightings’ dot’s dates with my wormed eyes, connecting them in order. There was the first point where my father felt sure he’d seen mother digging in the neighbor’s yard across the street. And the second, in the field of power wires where Dad swore he saw her running at full speed. I connected dots until the first fifteen together formed a nostril. Dots 16 through 34 became an eye. Together the whole map made a perfect picture of my mother’s missing head. If I stared into the face, then, and focused on one clear section and let my brain go loose, I saw my mother’s eyes come open. I saw her mouth begin to move. Her voice echoed deep inside me, clear and brimming, bright, alive. She said, “Don’t worry, son. I’m fat and happy. They have cake here. My hair is clean.” She said, “The earth is slurred and I am sorry.” She said, “You are OK. I have your mind.” Her eyes seemed to swim around me. I felt her fingers in my hair. She whispered things she’d never mentioned. She nuzzled gleamings in my brain. As in: the day I’d drawn her flowers because all the fields were dying. As in: the downed bird we’d cleaned and given a name. Some of our years were wall to wall with wonder, she reminded me. In spite of any absence, we had that. I thought of my father, alone and elsewhere, his head cradled in his hands. I thought of the day he’d punched a hole straight through the kitchen wall, thinking she’d be tucked away inside. All those places he’d looked and never found her. Inside their mattress. In stained-glass windows. How he’d scoured the carpet for her stray hair and strung them all together with a ribbon; how he’d slept with that one lock swathed across his nostrils, hugging a pillow fitted with her nightshirt. How he’d dug up the backyard, stripped and sweating. How he’d played her favorite album on repeat and loud, a lure. How when we took up the carpet in my bedroom to find her, under the carpet there was wood. Under the wood there was cracked concrete. Under the concrete there was dirt. Under the dirt there was a cavity of water. I swam down into the water with my nose clenched and lungs burning in my chest but I could not find the bottom and I couldn’t see a thing.”
― Blake Butler, Scorch Atlas