"The Gathering Impulse" by Jessica Adams

The Gathering Impulse

I prepare for another imagined future. Things I need: Could be anything. Shiny bits of metal and new shoes. Not books, which I still love — but I agree, they’re too heavy. The cat must come. Yes, she sheds, and you say you’re allergic. But we’ve found middle ground there.
What to leave behind? Black plastic bags — so I can’t have second thoughts. Dropped off where people dump their things, to be considered by fierce women, young men with ropy muscles and beautiful posture, complete unto themselves. We will touch the same things and share life.
(The blue coat I left on the curb in San Francisco, driving away in a borrowed Karmann Ghia, wearing three hats, trying for minimalism? That was only a warm-up. Objects appear to me in the early morning hours. Things I haven’t seen for years seem essential now.)
We almost left ourselves behind. The things that made us. Split off — no, torn asunder, like conjoined twins, bright fibers and veins, maybe even bone grown together. Leaving a ragged bloody selvage. Someday, scars.
That year, do you remember? You read a book on trauma. I carried a large plastic container full of frozen bananas and my Indian rugs. Looking out the car window crossing Lake Pontchartrain at a truck bed filled with exercise machines, a car loaded with coat hangers and stuffed animals — we needed all these things, with dusk falling, the storm whipping panic in the atoms of the air.
Life goes on, sure. Unless it doesn’t. But we were lucky.
November found me driving at top speed home — the whole place laid bare under the sun. Red, yellow, green, black — life returning to its natural state, nothing to do with what we want.
That’s home — the dead things I found covered in bright mold.
We are still hurtling toward something. This morning I saw two dead cats lying on the grass, and I think I heard them die. My neighbor’s girlfriend went back to Santo Domingo, where their son was born three weeks ago. Does my neighbor see him in dreams? Does he feel that body, part of his body, like a mother would? Dry limbs are everywhere, piles of debris, and debt. You are gone. Or I am gone. Or you are gone. I am gone. Or —

Jessica Adams

Jessica Adams is an English professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Her short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Thug Lit, Avidly, and Sweet Tree Review.

Headshot: Richard Adams

Photo Credit: Staff