Maps
by: Eliza A. Victoria
Maps
Always, the request to reconstruct what has already destroyed you. Show us where, and your finger sweeps mountains and seas to settle on a blossoming bruise, a gunshot wound, a burning wall, a room, a face, a sign. Tell us what happened that night. You unfurl what you know and hold down the corners with rocks. Tell us what you saw. If a witness: the bookcases, the overturned lamp, the ruined door, the bodies in supplication, the scattered self. If a survivor: the ceiling with a dying light. If the body – if the face on the photocopied poster –
Here I am, perhaps standing on the second before it happens. I have the grocery list as my guide. I have pre-marked my path. Why did this happen? The key is in the slow deconstruction. Bread, detergent powder, grapes, apples, cheese, a kilo of meat, a head of lettuce. This is why. This is where it starts. Every second is a second before it happens. I hear a siren and say a prayer. I hear a sound in the middle of the night and hope that you are safe. Your only weapon is what you know. I push the cart and know only these aisles and the order in which I visit them. The girl behind the counter offers no clues. What power do I have? Already the curtain curls under the weight of fire. Already the ground welcomes whatever it believes is coming.
Topography
I.
A plaque on the wall, a statue, a record in the archives. We let the blood streaks be,
we leave the bullets where they have fallen in the chase.
In a house, a father is left behind after a massacre. The bedrooms are left
the way they were found that night, the wallpaper fading, the gifts from twenty years ago
still unopened. A daily monument without an unveiling.
II.
Memories erode like buildings, and what is left standing is true. I have a picture of you in my
pocket, I take snapshots of our feet to remind myself where we last stood.
III.
During troubled nights, you dream I have gone missing. I have been abducted by the dark, I have
died of a disease. The house is as big as the world, and I cannot find you anywhere. Always, that
fear of loss. The midnight news becomes a warning. I hide my cell phone in the train, I wear
simple clothes, all my jewelry is cheap. Every long walk is a study in erasure: I blend in until I
am no longer there.
IV.
You speak from your dreams often at night. Let's go, you said once, and when I shook you
awake, you could not remember where you wanted me to be. But this: even in that terrain where
only you can go, I am invited.
V.
I caption your face There is nothing here really nothing here
but music.
VI.
I find refuge in folds: blankets, sheets, your skin.
There is comfort in knowing exactly where you are.
Maps
Those of us who still remember – we know nothing but longing.
My grandmother sits perfectly content by the shore
of this day, this isolated ocean, contained within itself.
I never ask, What is my name? for who am I to invade her view,
skipping rocks on her calm waters, blocking this sun she believes
has done her no wrong. Didn't my grandfather die in heat?
A headache on a summer day, a nap, a death that devastated her
now leaving her without a sound. Define injustice in this context,
define betrayal. Define love. Define peace. My father misses a turn
and I am filled with dread. Is this how it starts?
Perhaps inside him is a house now slowly being emptied
of photographs and furniture. How long before he throws open the door,
before I fail to stem the hemorrhaging moment?
Inside myself is an open window, where I cup my chin and long for you
while I can, while I can still remember. I now treasure the darkening sky,
the memory of disasters, the cold that visits me at night.
I treasure you, this open window, your absence and my awareness
of this absence. In my dreams, we are always the ocean,
I cannot see the end of ourselves, I am blinded by the sun
rising on our horizon, we are the one marvel I never fail to witness.
Maps
The child who will die that morning puts on a tulle dress and twirls.
She is impressed with the effect—the whisper of fabric,
the silken movements. On the glass, an elegant disappearance. Step, point,
turn in this corner. One never gets lost in these streets, this city that grows
new landmarks each day. The buses running, always keeping up.
The child takes note of the sofa, her starting point, its embroidered roses profuse
like the avenues the driver believes to be Heaven, all of them nameless,
all of them his. She studies her reflection in the windows then spins away.
This morning, the entire house is mine. The untouched milk in the blue mug,
the cat sleeping on the kitchen island, the corridors marked by her
passing. She bends down to retrieve a ribbon and ties her hair, looking
both ways. Here, the glaring sun. Here, the dark doorway of her parents' room.
Miles, minutes away, the crowd awaits, the wrong turn on the wrong street. I know this
house like the back of my hand, the child has been known to tell friends, contemplating
the advantages of shadows, the perfect place to hide to win the game.
Archaeology
Not satisfied with the sight of bodies placed side by side, they powered up the tractors and
started crushing bones beneath the machinery, folding and re-folding until anonymity was
achieved. Years later, experts went down there on hands and knees, digging up limbs powdered
and scattered like the kitchenware of a lost culture. One of them peered up at the impossibly blue
sky and remarked at the wind, What a nice place to fly kites. Somewhere in the four hundred
bags they had filled so far was the boy who once ran on this field, burning his fingers with the
beauty of ascension. The interns always cried whenever the bags were sieved. In the white glare
of the examination rooms, the bones and the pottery shards looked the same.
A mother had already been handed four hollow pieces of her child's rib cage, and days after the
burial, she was seen walking around the clearing, at one point bending down to pick up a pebble.
The place was sacred to her. Every piece of the place was sacred to her. During a storm, as she
held on to the walls of her house, the wind gave her an idea and now she respected every open
ground. Who knew how strong a wind could blow? Who could foresee the extent of a body's
transformation? She put an end to the habit of kicking at loose soil whenever she was angry or
pensive. Her face took on the shape and lines of a tourist lost in an unknown land, peering at
eyes, searching, searching. This could be my child, she whispered to herself, and held the pebble
close to her chest.
Maps
The grieving mother tries to stay within the copious notes of the landscape, but the world has
been bled of definition. The investigator runs his finger across the street signs. Here, he says to
the waiting crowd, and she wonders how he can make sense of the webs of a destroyed day. She
believes that in a matter of years, she will be the old woman in every trip who sits near the driver
and stares wide-eyed at the unfamiliar. One who will again and again take out a piece of paper to
peek at the address, because she is too used to disappearances. One who will search the streets
for any sign of comfort. How do I get here? The question asked softly, as though she is bracing
herself for the answer. One who will confide to a stranger, Once, reckless, I asked this from a
man, not knowing that inside his mouth was a story of a fire.
Architecture
Everything is borrowed space, the space I occupy the space left behind. Who was here before?
Who had a similar view of the garden?
In the story is a house in another part of the city, with a nearly identical room that can contain the
both of us. Inside are objects that can be used in our own murder: a pair of scissors on a stack of
folded napkins, the knives in the kitchen, a spool of floss in the downstairs bathroom, the poison
under the sink. Inside the story, the living says, I woke up and saw a stranger standing at the foot
of my bed.
Outside the story, we leave the couch and make plans for dinner, surrounded by the things that
belong to us. Here, a window, a lace curtain. Here a table, a chair, a view of the garden. A plate
of apples, a cup of coffee heavy with our reflection. Outside, night falls, and I touch your hand,
and we believe we are safe, we believe we have all the time in the world.
Day: Notes
1.
We can be buried by the things that do not worry us at this hour.
2.
This car the only car on this street.
3.
We talk about breakfast as if it were sacred. No child knocking on our windows, no display of
garlands. Only an idling garbage truck, men fixing a crooked billboard.
4.
(Beggars knock on the glass, so you knock back, and they move on. When did it come to pass
that a knock meant I am alive but I am not here? When did it come to pass that a knock meant No?)
5.
The trains are dead at this hour, but I only had the heart to say, The trains are silent.
6.
57 bodies. They knock outside my car window, and I knock back because I am weak.
7.
What is the point of my telling you this?
8.
All around you, suddenly: a shielded radiance, a muted glory. Perhaps you'll look at me and
think, There is no real kindness in the world, but don't we know this already?
9.
On that road, a man in a sweat-stained uniform is saying, Here. And here. And here.
10.
We have never been there. We will never be there. Before the guns were fired into their faces the
victims must have thought, No help will come to me now, and they were right.
11.
An afterlife? Perhaps. Perhaps it is a place. Perhaps in that place is clarity. A blinding. But right
now we can still see. For example, I still like flowers. I still look forward to the smell of
morning. Here. And here. And here. The places where you want to be kissed.
12.
I collect them like newspaper clippings. A gesture that makes me smile, or perhaps a moment
that makes me feel worthless. Here is the trick in begging: put a few coins in the can to fool
people about your worth. All I want to say: I was not empty when I first came to you.
13.
And now this morning that does not find them in it. The knocking on glass as we read about
mutilated genitalia, an exit wound the size of a saucer. A coin clangs on the bottom of the can.
Please. Please. Please.
14.
The sun rose the day after the massacre. This is either indifference, or a show of an infinite
mercy.
15.
- It is still dark.
- We are not frightened.
- We turn away like the morning.
- We dream of an open field.
Outline
I. Title (The eternal present)
II. Author. (I was there/ I heard about it from/ I read it in/ The one to blame for incorrect
attributions/ The one to praise for the details)
III. The gist. (Proof of skill, the one-sentence narrative.)
(Who/what/where/when/why/how)
(For example: The husband/Murder/A house with lace curtains/Last night/Betrayal/A knife, or
bare hands)
(Or: A crowd of five hundred/ Stampede/A gathering, a clearing/Last year/A phantom scream, a
sudden gunshot/ The dead bodies between the fleeing)
(Note: There were really five hundred and five people, but a round number will do. In the first
paragraph, the five need not exist, or they may exist in the phrase "more than" – e.g. "More than
50 bullet-riddled bodies were found on the field.")
The place to stop, the refuge of short attentions. (Outside is a train to catch, another story to read/
You could care less/ You don't recognize the characters involved/ This is not your story/ You
already know the story)
IV. Quote. (An elegy, inexact, deficient, lacking: "He was a good man." "They were good kids.")
V. Quote. (Second-hand, unusual: "The victim reportedly said, 'Wag po, sir' before perishing."
Don't, sir – an appeal to the courteous side of a murderer, or the victim's curious need to be
respectful even seconds before his death.)
(Note: Someone should say, "That animal does not deserve an honorific", preferably the wife, or
the daughter, but if no one says it, you cannot write it down. You cannot write, "animal".)
VI. Supporting paragraphs. (Names and ages/ Exactitudes/ Time down to the minute/ The chain
of events/ A proliferation of witnesses/ The number of bullet holes, the number of stab wounds,
the red marks on a white neck)
VII. Quote. (A calculating voice, for balance: "We have no evidence to support the claims.")
VIII. Quote. (A scathing line, for emotional afterimage: "We will not forget." "We have not
moved on." "We will not forgive.")
Variations on the Expulsion from Eden
i. Adam and Eve as Evicted Tenants
We wager you wanted us to do it, giving us this place for free, allowing us to re-paint the walls, rearrange the existing furniture.
Cerise, we decided to call it, and we rolled up our sleeves and applied the coat in clean, thick strokes, watching, amazed, as the paint dried, accepting its definition.
Rose, we whispered to each other, and we licked each other's nipples, each other's cheeks.
And if we said vermilion? And if we said fire? We pushed our tongues into each other's mouths, noting the subtle change in taste. Every day our lips burned with the act of naming.
Always, that tree in a corner, unfenced, unguarded, and all at once we knew that everything has been named even before our arrival.
We attacked cerise, chipping away at this mistake with our fingernails. Not rose, not vermilion, not fire. We moved away from each other, clothing ourselves, preserving the landscapes we have yet to discover.
The unnamed belongs to us, but now even the blank walls are resistant.
Is this what you wanted us to learn: how limited we are, how unnecessary?
We were hungry. We were just trying to find a shelter from your rain.
ii. Adam and Eve as Murder Suspects
That day the future took shape, an outline in chalk on the wet sidewalk.
What horrible conceit, the illusion of endlessness, your perfect pathways that never meet each other.
And now, the threat of exile. How it pales when compared to the moment of unshielding. The juice dribbling down our lips, the seeds lodged in our throats.
How it wounded us, how we wept at the sight of all this beauty.
Taken as evidence: our clothes, our wandering gaze. The tree bends in supplication: Forgive me for telling you the truth.
Must we now say We did not do it, We do not know anything, We have been in this room for hours, We were elsewhere when the crime was committed?
Must we say Show us your face, you bastard, you scum? We try to look past your light and witness only our own reflections.
iii. Adam and Eve as Abandoned Children
So this is it, then: this dark spot on the side of the road, the swirling dust, the diminishing form of your car. We move forward to keep the distance constant. We wonder if we are framed by your rearview mirror, if it is in your nature to look back. We wave and pretend it is a gesture of welcome.
Maybe somewhere in your wallet is a picture of us, tattered, handled often. See, now? Deterioration can be an evidence of love. Dog-eared pages, scuff marks on leather, overlapping fingerprints on the glass of a coffin.
The conspicuous absence of the fruit on its branch, and all you notice is our sudden lack of questions, our disobedience.
We come back to the empty house and try to cherish our dirty faces, the dishes in the sink, our clothes in need of mending, the dirt settling on all the surfaces. (Deterioration can be an evidence of love.)
We try to ignore how similar this is to abandonment.
Come back to us and show us again that rock, that flower that you wanted us to see, and we promise that we will do it right this time. We will say How lovely, instead of giving you a wordless smile, the pained look of someone who knows all the answers.
