"Sylvia" by Mckenzie Meyer

Sylvia 

 
Not Plath, yet still tragic.

Your mind like powdered sugar shaken through a sieve.

The year before last, we made Christmas cookies:

Growing up, I had never done this with you. We made the icing by hand, splashes of food dye and sugar sticking to my fingertips, staining them red and mustard yellow and pine green.

I had been fixated on the fact that I was going to die one day. Another interval of this new self-absorbed agony interrupted — your house had smelled bad — sharp odor like unwashed dog.

When I was still a child, I had admired you for your crisp, lavender-fresh cleanliness, for your worldliness. It seemed an amazing thing to me. You lived all by yourself in a huge, bright, meticulously-clean house. Everything gleamed. I wanted that also.

Your Labrador ran into the street that day; a car hit her. She survived. You didn’t think that she needed to go to the vet, but my aunt had insisted, stepped out and took the dog. Fractures, internal bleeding — any number of things that could kill the poor creature. All dismissed. I had remained with my false cheer, something small trembling inside my chest. Hidden instinctual knowledge.

Last summer, we bottled wine together:

Serendipity, seeing you.

I waited, but you did not say a single word to me.

I waited even more. I’ve never been one eager to make the first move.

You stared past me, through me until I went to you myself, and I said hello. Had you not recognized me? I still remember the clank and the clank and clank of the glass bottles and the machine pushing them on their little mechanical pathway and the filling and the capping and your silence. The air was perfumed with the scent of rosé, lovely and pink and fruity. But you stood by me, awkward and uncomfortable — you had smelled bad, too. Unwashed. Grit of eyeshadow pressed fuzzily on your eyelids. Shine of grease on your scalp. There were stains on your pants.

The drinking probably doesn’t help.

I poured half-a-bottle of good wine down the drain last night. The taste of it too sharp, too acidic, too much like poison.

I stared at my hazy reflection in the mirror when I finished my shower. Stupefied and still and unwavering — these things are genetic, aren’t they? Your mom had it too. I hadn’t seen her much growing up. There had been a reason. The ya ya house (derogatory). Someone had to take care of her — until the money ran out. Or she’d wander off.

You’d always been so proud of your genes, of your heritage. Norwegian. Your father had made little wooden Viking ships in Seattle when he wasn’t busy hunting down Ted Bundy.

The other day your friend took you on a hike:

You had loved to ride horses with her, and she was clearing the trail, but you got tired, and she asked you just to wait a few more minutes so you both could go back to the car together.

Then you disappeared. Search and Rescue came. You wouldn’t answer your god-damned phone; it had been buried deep within your bag, and you didn’t have time to. Everyone was calling you. You had to keep walking. You had heard it ring. You ignored it. You had to keep walking. You didn’t know where you were going, but you knew you needed to keep walking and walking and walking. They found you a good five or six miles away from the car. And you told them that you didn’t know where you were going, but you knew that you had to keep walking.

Yesterday you flung your hands in the air, so frustrated that your divorce hadn’t gone through yet.

(First or second? Don’t worry. They both have. It’s been more than twenty years.)

You drove me to the first wine bottling that I had ever done. I felt bad for you all alone in your house. No one visiting. I wanted to be close to you, to know more about you.

I forgot that there has always been some imperceptible barrier between us. And perhaps there is a reason.

Still, you told me all about the roads and the grid that leads us from one place to another. And your voice sparkled electric and keen and present. The sun had tilted through the car window. I imagined knowing you when you were young.

Mckenzie Meyer

Mckenzie Meyer is a poet and writer. She is obsessed with dainty bone china tea cups, her two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, and paintings of Ophelia. She graduated from Western Washington University and holds a BA in English, Creative Writing.

Headshot: Erin Meyer

Photo Credit: Staff