Fat Man In Darkness

Early morning a man sits at his kitchen table thinking how fat he is. He writes about it. Tapping the keys of his computer. The coffee cools by fractions of degrees. He wonders if losing weight is like that. Fractions of degrees leading to a cold cup. Chaos, he thinks. We tend toward chaos. He nods at the protein bar wrapper, a thing meant to satisfy. It’s empty. He sips coffee. Types some words. Rain has begun again. Thunder is coming nearer. If the sun rises, it won’t break through the dark clouds. The planet grows more chaotic. Out of his control. Tell me about it, he says to the cat. She meows not for the planet, coffee, or rain. She is hungry. Always hungry. Tell me about it, he says again. Thunder speaks instead. A flash of lightning and the power goes out. The overhead light. The man goes on typing. The battery will expire. The coffee is growing cold. He and the cat remain hungry, unsatisfied. He can’t remember eating the protein bar, the taste of hot coffee. Rain pounds hard. He thinks again how fat he is, how hungry, how out of control and chaotic his life feels. After a flash of lightning, the room becomes too dark to see. 

Howe Caverns, 1973

The darkness in Howe Caverns is absolute. Darker still in memory. 1973. Five years old. In a small boat. Floating down a narrow channel. Between rocks. Under rock. Far underground. A tall man guides us through darkness. Tells tales of the cavern. Tales of darkness. The boat bumps against a thin chain strung from rock wall to rock wall. The ride is over. People climb up onto dry cavern rock. I stare ahead past the chain. Water flows into darkness and disappears into sound. It falls. 1973. Five years old. The sound of a fall into absolute darkness. The end. I know the chain cannot hold. We are all slipping into darkness. The fall I still can’t imagine. The mouth of a monster. And I scream at that unknown. My father lifts me out of the boat. Tells me it’s alright, I’m okay. 1973. He was thirty-five years old. The darkness of memory is absolute. Dad unfastened the chain. Drifted into that darkness. I stand on the dry rock. The sound of falling water whispers through the darkness in a language I still can’t understand. I’ve stop screaming now to listen. 
 

February Fifth

It always snows on the fifth of February. Even when it doesn’t. After midnight, an inch, maybe two, falls and settles softly. Enough so the driveway must be cleared. In the early grey morning we go into the cold alone to put things back to right. We push the snow, lift and blow it aside. The clouds darken even before we are done and snow falls again. Wet and heavy now. A cold slush raining down from a sky so low it denies heaven. A strange bolt of winter lightning shoots through us and darkness comes to stay, like white snow piled at the curb turning a putrid black. The temperature falls hard. The ground freezes so deep it puts the lie to hell. Stones crack, heave, and rise up to litter a field. We stand beside an open hole, trying to remember feeling warm, and wondering how to put all this somehow back to right. 

Wrong

This morning hasn't felt right. Woke from a deep sleep feeling unrested. Body was sore though I've done no exercise nor had any falls. House was cold. Winter, though it hadn't left, had returned. All was darkest grey. Then I was in the car. My seventeenth year driving to the wrong job. The windshield ice wouldn't clear. The car would not warm. Lights kept turning red. At a stop near the university, a young woman crossed in front of my car. She wore chunky, four-inch heels. Her walk was all wrong. I watched pellet-snow wind-driven against her bare shoulders. I wondered where she had lost her coat. I imagined where she might have been. I shivered with her cold. The light turned green. She walked one way. I drove the other, thinking I should have given her a blanket I didn't have. At the onramp, I heard sirens. An ambulance in the southbound lane. A fire engine crossing under the highway to some other disaster. My car sounded wrong. The steering pulling left. I pulled back and pushed the accelerator, feeling all the wrongs, knowing nothing else I could do.