Joseph Kerschbaum
Anticipatory Loss Nothing is wrong this morning in the same way missing children smile on junk mail next to their older, simulated selves that ask, “Have you seen me?” I drop them in the recycling bin on my way out the door. A distant tornado siren is misplaced with no signs of severe weather. It must be a test of the emergency broadcast system. Somewhere a storm is brewing. Like staking a sundial gnomon into the ground to capture and release the passing hours, I walk this path every morning to keep the days from expiring anonymously. I want to observe the trees transitioning between seasons as autumn signals its arrival in vivid golds, lush reds and darkening days. Staring upwards, I often appear in conversation with a deity or an apparition which has been appropriate considering my casual state of wonder that even a mundane morning stroll elicits on a paved trail that I could navigate blindfolded. Leaves swaying look like fire waving as if they are trying to convey a voiceless message, maybe a warning or a farewell. We aren’t listening. It leaves me wondering how many autumns we have left because lately, it feels like I’m strolling through a long goodbye. Brown, crisp grass crunches underfoot as I picture uncontainable wildfires out west that will burn everywhere eventually. The small stream is now a dry scar with overgrown brush and dead branches. Easy to miss if you don’t explore this path every morning. Walking this trail, observing these occurrences, is starting to feel like stroking the matted fur of a sick cat that will be put to sleep in the coming hours. ** SOS Wearing my noise-canceling headphones, I am an isolated island in a polluted river of people flowing down a crowded city sidewalk. Shocked as a hooked fish in a stream, someone grabs my hand, urgent but gentle. Mussed dark hair and olive-toned skin, a man pleads with frantic gestures. His eyes glistened with tears as sweat soaks through his wrinkled tan suit. Removing my headphones, a deluge of sound spills out of him, but nothing resembles words. He guides me down the block with one hand, in the other I hold my phone trying to translate his panic. Search results come back unrecognized. His nervous rambling gains momentum. Passersby keep their heads down and keep their distance. This could be a scam, a prank, or some nefarious plot. Or worse, this is real. Without exchanging a recognizable word, I know he is in crisis. I have been sandbagging against my own swelling chaos. I wrench my hand from his sweaty grasp. “I’m sorry,” I say, unsure if he understands. He understands. I recognize his disappointment. All the hands I’ve let go at the worst moments could form a round of thunderous applause. As I walk in the opposite direction, his strained voice is an echo fading, a soul being washed out to sea. ** The Villain When he isn’t white-knuckling the steering wheel, he unleashes a frustrated flip of the bird. In my rear-view mirror, I discern a torrent of expletives intertwined with wisps of cigarette smoke emanating from the fuming driver. The Chevy S10 engine growls in second and third gear, escalating to a roar when pushed to fourth and fifth. Our cars hover inches away from each other. He thinks he can make us move faster without touching me as if our fenders are repulsive magnets. My foot eases off the accelerator, opting for a subtle approach rather than tapping the brakes. With parks lining both sides of the street and the school zone setting in, I decide that a minuscule act of rebellion may save lives. This is a stand against the tyranny of bullies. Or I'm being petty. I'm justifying my own bad behaviour. I am the monster in his version of today. Maybe there is an emergency somewhere. Maybe his wife is in labour, someone is dying, or his home is burning. How many other stories exist where I am a monster? The easily retrievable narratives where I was awful make me flinch. But the transgressions that never registered with my selfish self haunt me for a minute. There are people who never want to see me again. ** Smothering Memory The last thing I remember is laughing and throwing Skittles into the gorilla enclosure as I leaned over the iron railing. Pungent wet fur drifts through my consciousness before my eyes blink awake. From the depths, I resurface in a suffocating embrace, crushing me into a diamond. Panic jolts up my spine. Tears drain down my cheeks. Calloused fingers stroke my hair. A troop of aggressive silverbacks surrounds us. Frenzied, they pound their chests and flash bone-crushing incisors. Their primal screams blur with those of the panicking zoo patrons. My saviour's hot breath on my face as she drags my limp body to a hay-covered corner. The scene reaches a fever pitch as hinges squeaking open pierce the chaos. Khaki-clad zoo personnel collect the bruised, urine-soaked boy in exchange for salty treats and lavish praise. Even now, I still feel Binti Jua’s arms smothering me. I have never been held or protected so fiercely. ** Brocken Spectre Waiting at a crosswalk, I remember the silence of our collective gasp. People's feet lift from the pavement gentle as feathers in a breeze, screaming. Everything flips upside down. Panic erupts. Some grasp street lights, traffic lights, building facades, and TV antennas on rooftops. Like terrified helium balloons loosed at a birthday party, people drift weightless into the blue sky. There is no time to ask why certain people stay grounded, and others don’t. One hand grips a bike rack, the other grasps my wife's hand slipping away. Her feet suspended upward as if hanging from an inverted cliff. We refuse to let go. The choice isn't ours. Reversed gravity is too strong to hold on. Her eyes are wide, hands reaching beyond their grasp as she rises. Shock freezes my body. I can't breathe. I lose her in the sun, then again in the exodus ascending. Thousands of bodies form a thick cloud, smothering daylight like an eclipse. In the abnormal darkness, weeping swells from the diminished crowd on the street. Afterward was a blur, a gap lost in a disconnected bog. Minutes or hours passed before sunlight pierced my haze. The skies were clear as if nothing had happened. For a disoriented second, I didn’t remember why I was lying on the sidewalk. Years passed with no explanation from scientists or the government. Once, I watched a news exposé on what happens to the human body at rapidly rising elevation. Freezing at lower altitudes, suffocating as oxygen thins, and burning away in the stratosphere. The graphic reenactment haunted me. On sunny days, I still look skyward when unexpected shadows roll over me. Every time, I try to catch a glimpse of you. You're never there. ** Rapture Anxiety On a white beach in New Zealand at sunrise, a runner discovers two hundred stranded pilot whales. Each one slowly suffocates under its own weight. A crowd develops to dump buckets of water on their flaking skin and take pictures. After decades of this brutal ritual, we still don’t know why these mass suicides occur. The world is filled with mystery. Scientists understand Mars's distant surface better than the Mariana Trench's alien world. All the data arrives at the same conclusion: the ocean is coming for us. Rising sea levels stalk the shorelines. Hurricanes rage into monsters, like the one swallowing the west coast of Florida right now. As of this morning, it is too late to flee. You have to stay, hunker down and hold on. If our home doesn’t end us, the rest of the universe waits in line. Even if we stop inventing new ways to kill ourselves, our species won’t see the blinding, all-consuming light of the sun going supernova in five billion years. Any day now, another asteroid the size of the Empire State Building could wipe out all life on the planet. We’ll be just as gone as the dinosaurs. This time, more than fossils will remain in the sediment. No one will be left to excavate our remnants. Just the other day, six million miles away, a satellite blasted into a benign asteroid like a battering ram to send it off course. A dry run to circumvent an extinction event. When most people look toward the sky, they don’t think about catastrophic space rocks in the dark. They watch storm clouds froth on the horizon or connect the dots between constellations. As if looking over their shoulders, the faithful look to the heavens with hands clasped tight to plead and pray to a punishing entity that will soon rapture half of the souls on the planet and leave the rest of us in chaos. ** Joseph Kerschbaum’s most recent publications include Midnight Sunrise (Main Street Rag Press, 2024), Mirror Box(Main St Rag Press, 2020), and Distant Shores of a Split Second (Louisiana Literature Press, 2018). His recent work has appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Hamilton Stone Review, The Inflectionist Review, and Main Street Rag. Joseph lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his family. |