This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2018 by Maryse Meijer
First published in the United States in 2018 by Black Balloon, an imprint of Catapult (catapult.co)
All rights reserved
Jacket and book design by Jonathan Yamakami
Jacket illustrations by Rufus Newell
ISBN: 978-1-948226-01-1
eISBN: 978-1-948226-02-8
Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West
Phone: 866-400-5351
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938765
Printed in China
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For D.
Because
a fire
THE WORLD
I don’t draw you anymore.
I want
to see
through the trees.
The way the pen used
to feel,
a weapon, drawing blood from the page:
not a hymn,
not an homage—
why are the best songs love songs I want
to draw
death but death doesn’t make
music. On the page or
elsewhere.
The wood
doesn’t care if you live
or die. It
is dying all the time. Living. Unsurprised.
But I
am not
a wood, I am not a stream I mourn
the branch that
breaks from its body
and I want
to make a mark more than I want
to make love
but I was
only
ever good at this one
fucking thing
THE HIEROPHANT
I’d only been away
for a day no city no
sky I recognized, how full it was,
the hard stars so cold-shouldered
blinking You are alone,
Only not quite:
there was the stream, after all, and the trees,
and ants relentless over the counters,
the foxes fucking their way through the evenings
their screams so human it chilled me,
high slaughterhouse sound
whistling in every direction.
I could not get the fire started and the floors had no carpets
and the boots I brought had a hole in them and the dew
came through.
I went out to the porch and put my head against the post.
I knew what a car was. I knew
convenience stores and dollar hot dogs and coffee
that appeared
when my money appeared and the phone ready to ring
and the traffic like the sea
lapping the concrete coast of the sidewalk,
24 hours, something always open.
I wanted to get away and I was away
and there was that sky that seemed to say, You know nothing.
I took my pencils out, my paper, my ink.
The rough table was short on one leg and when I drew
it rocked from one side to the other.
Moths flew from the cabinets.
I had never been in love.
KINDLING
I saw the light on in the woodcutter’s hut and walked
through the leaves and knocked on his door not knowing
he was there on the porch sitting in the dark a blanket
across his lap he said What. I said I’m alone I can’t start the
fire. My nose dripped. I had no gloves. I thought it would be
warm, my first month in the woods. I just stood there. He got
up and I followed him into the cabin, my cabin, and he took
the box of long matches from the mantel and showed me.
How dry the wood had to be. Stacked just so. Blow. Smoke
in my eyes. How it stung. Squatting side by side I sniffed the
cold coming off him how long did he sit outside like that in
the dark it was so dark. The fire swelled. After a moment he
left. Sparkle.
Snap.
And the burn
ORBIT
I’ll speak just once, here,
about my father.
You were nothing like him:
he was small, lean as a young tree
and scared. He sat in corners
and cleaned his glasses
and tried to smile. He was almost never
there. I mean in his head he wasn’t.
He liked to see me
with my pens, at the kitchen table:
he said I would be
a great artist
though he was an insurance man
who couldn’t name a single painting.
He told me
before he disappeared
about the way he thought
I should love.
Don’t marry, he said,
the one you like best.
That’s the way to keep it, you know.
Friction
slows a thing down.
Love him
from a distance. And he’ll always
be yours.
I said, Yes Dad.
I was ten and uncomprehending.
A year later he left the house