Winter in a Tincan

We all come from the water.. I remember you’d whisper it to me every winter. You’d say only a few of us would return back to it. And I did. I am here today, watching the waves, and as i do, the blood inside my  cheeks tastes luke warm. It’s cold out, and the trees are almost bare,their skeletal branches holding up only a few copper-tinted leaves. I started to use them instead of my mirror to get dressed every morning. And even my hair is starting to look like the tree roots dug up from the earth, I haven’t cut it in over 2 years, since the last time I saw you. I fell off the swing last week and broke my left arm, and now the blue veins are crawling up my wrist. They’re twisting at that spot where you’d grab me and we would hide from the flooding water towers. 

It would always start at dusk, but the flood didn’t scare us. We built our own Noah’s Ark with wool blankets and styrofoam dinners to last through the week. But this October, I’ve drowned. This October, I keep one small pillow on my twin-sized mattress and eat stale boxed cereals for supper. Sometimes when I come home from work, I put my blue kettle on the stove, watch the steam rise, steep some tea, but I never drink it. I do this for the same reason as when I overflow my coffee-maker in the mornings and leave it pouring for hours, until I’m finally running late. Then, I turn it off. But I just flush the coffee down the drain and watch it spiral into my rusting sink, and onto the edges of the glass jars that I’ve been using as cups for the past week. I don’t even bother doing dishes anymore. 

Plus, the fish  need the cups more than me. Sometimes, while everyone is asleep, I go down to the water and I bring the fish with me. I carry them inside that yellow tin can that we’ d use as a flower pot after your mother died. The water changes as the seasons do, but I can still make out the music from the waves. I like to sail out here, only when city is the most alive and I know that  nobody will notice me. 20 miles north and I don’t need much, I only pack a few things, my wooden wide-toothed comb, my grey raincoat and the tin can, of course.

On the news today they broadcasted a storm warning. Another flash flood. It’s just enough to get me out of the bed, away from the stale, yellow wallpaper, and back to you. These rocks feel colder than the insides of my stomach, left hungry for days. I wonder if they’ve been feeding you well there.

I still remember how your mother would ask me to drop by on sunday nights after the sermon. I’d bring you canned soup and salty oyster crackers, your favorite. You wouldn’t eat any unless I poured myself a cup and we’d spread out on the floor of your uncle’s basement, and we would listen to the neighbors fighting. Your sisters would get scared, especially Katrina. She’d run upstairs in her milky, transparent night gown and search in the closest drawer for the new testament. It would always make me smile, even though I always skipped Wednesday Bible studies  and never prayed before my meals or even before bed time. I hear that she is in Utah now, two kids and a husband. Right outside the deserted mountains of Salt Lake. She never cared for school, and unless it was the Bible, the books were nothing but ink dust on her fingers. Her eyes would only light up for what she’d call “lord the saviour” and small choir children. She knew her purpose and exactly what the bible had in mind for her;a big bang theory of a wedding, priests, altar pieces ,polished wooden crucifix , and a young pink-nostrilled missionary boy. 

Your mother would have been proud. Katrina was your twin, and I never knew until she told me so over Thanksgiving dinner, and a month before your 18th birthday. She made sure to place a thickly-braided leather journal on the corner of the table, with stiff, gold embroidered letters marking Latter Day Saints. Her mouth tied into a soft violet knot and her eyes jumped back between the bridge of my face and the book. She knew your mother would die before the new year comes. Everyone did. She knew that god would lift her away from the muddy earth. The whole family still believes she stopped swallowing those tiny porcelain blue gleaming pills. And she did. She passed away late December,still petal-plucked and rosey-fingered. 

That same night was the first time you left the fish swimming without the music. Before , you would never do that. If I heard Tchaikovsky or Chopin in the corridor, I knew you must be out wandering, you said the fish only liked the classics. Something that is not capable of death, something with roots that will live forever. But you left your room silent that evening. Your parents never knew about the fish, you’d hide the jars under your bunk bed and store fresh water cups up in the attic. 

After that evening I didn’t speak to you for three months. I had started to pack my suitcase, preparing for the grey northern city, when Katrina showed up.  She stormed in, her cylinder eyes were bright red like two shiny rubies, and her bony cheeks, pale like skim milk. She cried. 

She cried, giggling through every other tear.  I took the scarlet envelope from her hands. It was a letter from the church saying that you were set to leave by the end of May. The men in black robes didn’t know where they were sending you, nobody did. But that didn’t matter anymore.I read the letter over a few times and glanced back at Katrina. She squeezed my arm, that felt like limp meat, and pointed over to the braided basket sitting in the corner of the room. I walked over and peeled back the wool blanket. There were twelve glass jars filled with water, your own little aquarium.

You named the fish after season months. The autumn ones were variations of orange and purple, the spring- green and callow ,the summer ones were maroon like a cardinal. But the winter fish were swimming together in the yellow tin can,your mother’s favorite color. Katrina said you wanted them up North with me. Closer to the ocean, into their green Atlantic shelter. The fish keep me company, it took time for them to get used to the city noise, but I treat them to a new classic every Friday,the most recent one a Mendelssohn.

Ten seasons have passed since then. I’ve been sending you letters to that Maryland address that the youth group leader from the church gave me, but you have yet to reply. I hope this one finds you well. I bite the blood inside my tongue as I hear the ocean salt crash on the mossy cliff.I know that the hour is ending. Tonight I will take my yellow tin can and  go with the fish back to their home, classical music pounding inside my lungs. Your sister would cry because she believes in the water burial and sings choir spells of the ending darkness. But we, we never believed.I hope you still don’t.