"Viking Funeral"

To be published in the 2010 Suffolk Literary Magazine:

"Viking Funeral"

I spent the morning in the bath. The water was warm and warmer and scalding, but the bottom of the tub was stubborn and cold. I sat soaking. My skin pruned as I thought about osmosis and water transfer, as my pupils tightened and dripped like inkblots, watching the water evaporate. I watched the water move into the drain, swirling like a small, ineffective tornado. Forceful and destructive, but with a certain grace. I used to be so intrigued by that when I was small. I still am small.

A life of extremes can be exhausting. Up, down. In, out. Happy, manic. Drunk, sober. Starving, sickly full. Binge, purge; inhale, exhale. Daughter of Bacchus and Dido educated by the muses of lust and tragedy. Busy gal. Falling in love with duality isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be (or so I’m told). No one ever warns you what might happen if and when you actually become a ‘beautiful tragedy’. All that is left is sitting at the finish line only to see that it’s the same earth beyond it as it was before it. Sometimes I’m not sure what is worse: being passionate or passive.

The need for passion and creativity still breathes within me though, no matter how much bath water I try to drown it in. They go on flickering on and off, like a gas stove with a faulty pilot light. Not entirely broken, just in need of an adjustment. I am learning that sometimes the consequences of human destiny are there for a reason.

When I was a kid, my dad used to never let me re-light the pilot light on the stove in our apartment. The one time I did, instead of carefully situating the flame at the opening, I just turned on the gas on and struck a match near the burner.
"That is how you blow yourself up," he said.