Dear Wigleaf,

Lately, I've taken to calling my body an Organ House. I imagine the phrase as a translation from the German, although I know the actual word to use in this instance.

It just makes sense to me, my definition: A body is a structure, however flimsy, to house our organs and whatever else resides in us. The skull a gracefully curved roof, the eyes windows, mouth a hideous barnacled door, the rest a basement of intricately stacked meat. When you put it like that, well.

Spring makes me lonesome for places and times I'll never have again, nature's cyclical renewal a little jab of a reminder of my own hurtling forward motion. I recalled a decade-old conversation with a former friend on a night the Panhandle trees were beginning to fuzz. My window open, I convinced myself the wind was tinged with eucalyptus and not urine. I called my friend to ask what happens after we die. Do we have souls?

"I can't believe we get 70-odd years and then nothing," he said.

I ate another miniature Snickers, listened to the honk and screech of Fell Street.

"There has to be something," he said, and hung up.

It was settled. I hung up too and rolled into bed.

Our greatest talent is finding reassurance where there is none, or perhaps just an outline, inkling. Faith, I guess you'd call it. Where do we go from here?

Sincerely yours, Kate




- - -

Read Kate Garklavs' story.

W i g l e a f                05-04-19                                [home]