Free Mayflies by Sara Veglahn Page B

both silent and could not stop speaking. I said things like, “A long road down to the valley”, and, “There is nothing but the shape of your hands to call you back, to tell you what you must do.” My ladies continued on. They massaged my arms with fragrant oils, they sang low clear songs.
    When I look at my hands I think, These are not mine. This is not me .

    Mud and insects and we went walking there right down in it, fish smell, dead fish, mud and insects, we went there walking at night in the summer it was different than in winter, it never froze really, there was a slime that covered you if you submerged yourself and you couldn’t get the smell out, it was more than mud or insects, or fish smell, dead fish, it was rotten, the impossibility of really reaching the bottom because the bottom was so deep with mud whatever was down there something ancient like the catfish that hovered slowly suspended moving barely their scales like armor, their ancient bodies a call to a past we weren’t a part of, this smell, it got into everything.

    She spent days alone in the city, where she wandered back and forth between the apartment she rented downtown and the bridge with its red neon sign advertising beer and its blue neon sign advertising flour. It was a time of collecting things.
    She picked up everything she found. Someone’s lost shopping list or coat button. A shard of green glass worn smooth by traffic. Once, a fifty dollar bill dropped outside the museum. She looked around for someone looking around for lost money, but when no one appeared, she slipped it into her mitten and kept it folded against her palm.
    Soft snow grabbed her hair and coat. Her boots on the salted sidewalk made a noise like chewing. She gazed at her apartment building from across the street. It looked both warm and hollow. She crossed the street and climbed the stairs to the door. Her key did not fit into the lock. She tried it the other way and it still didn’t work. She tried a different key and it didn’t work either. She tried every key she had. It was dark and cold and getting colder. She sat on the stairs and examined her keys. They seemed familiar. Nothing was different. She tried again—each key right-side up and upside down. Something must have happened. She turned to the buzzers on the wall to try to call someone, anyone, to let her in. As she scanned the names for a familiar name, she saw that her name was not among them. A sound like waves sloshed through her. She returned to the street and saw that it was not her building. She was on the wrong street. She had been so sure that this was where she lived.

    I have a dream in which a horse is stolen by horse thieves. I am supposed to ride this horse, but when I come back from getting ready to do so, the horse has been stolen and the thieves are waiting for me too.
    It didn’t stop raining for days. The water kept rising. We didn’t know what to do except wait for it to stop. The road became a river. The water moved so fast you would be carried away if you fell into it. An expanse of water larger than the valley it filled. Bursting its banks. Such escapes—away from rivers and the language of rivers. To seek something soft like mud or feathers. You wouldn’t be found. The water bursting its banks.

    When I died, the sun shone strong. A clear day without much breeze. All the traffic was stopped on the bridge and no one was in any hurry. Many people stood outside of their cars, reading the paper and waiting to go. Everyone in their summer clothes, everyone alive.
    The streets where I died were narrow with shadow. The shadows expanded past the corner store. I would walk through days inhaling and exhaling. I would have to close the blinds to the glare. Everything I loved was placed into boxes. Everything I had was packed away.
    I gazed long at the soft sun. I was down.
    When the great wave burst through me, I was stranded. Drowning on concrete,