Not Normal
March 10, 2025
My wife is listening to the weekly update from the company CEO, whose eyes have grown tired, heavy. Whose message is practiced. He will, if it is his last act, catch the shake from his voice.
She will stay there, listening for a while, and then, steadying herself on the guardrails of a ship that is catching water, begin again to work until she is told to stop.
I am getting a guard built to protect my teeth from my teeth, myself from myself. My jaw keeps locking. My gums receding. At night I wake with spasms down my spine. The dentist, she says: this is not normal.
Last night, while I worked against myself, I dreamt of Susan who died this year. She sat in another dead friend’s seat and smiled as if to say: Yes, I am here!
How many dead can occupy one place, and what does it mean for a place to die? And why do we keep working against ourselves? And when she is unmoored, like she is right now, does my wife want her mom, dead as many years as she mothered?
The ship is sinking and so many ships are sinking and so many people are cheering them down. This is not normal, the way my beloved begins to work again. As if to say, I am here. I am here. We are.