About The Fall
You
have to go, he said, finally.
Go
where? I asked.
Inside.
I
have to stay with him, and watch.
Watch
what?
Watch
for Owen.
Is
this him?
The
chill flesh of the dead man’s palm began to register in my hand.
No. I don’t know this man. Owen is out there.
It
had become dark while I knelt, shivering and staring at the ground. It was raining.
How
long has it been? I asked.
Three
hours. A long time now.
He
snapped on a new pair of gloves. My name
is Paul.
Crouching
to take my hand, he examined my fingertips.
Your nail beds. They’re purple.
I
swayed, fetal, and shook my head. He
stooped and cradled me into his arms, moving faster now that I was
secured.
I
thought of my wedding day, and doorways, and the rumble of Owen’s chest. His slanted smile.
I
had seen my husband breathing hard and pulling at his knee, wedged between
seats smacked together by the impact.
Saw gray water foam with purses and peanut bags and tug his curls toward
the sky. Saw silver bubbles cling to the
corners of his mouth as he punched the seat in front of him. Saw others struggle and go slack.
I
know he pulled himself free, felt him jerk his leg loose. Shared his surge to the fast retreating
surface. Heard the air escape his mouth
like a flock of doves.
I
hear them flutter and coo. Their gentle murmurs
echo through my bathtub, where I am releasing my breath, burble by burble. My legs squeak against the porcelain.
Did
fish stop to smell his chest when they parted the waves of hair to nibble his
freckles, as I did. Did eels slip their
tongues between his front teeth, as I did.
By
now, a pair of steeltoed boots has attuned to his absence like a lover, emptied
by a thousand mouths, the strange clicking and whirring of the sea his final
song.
I turn on my side and nestle next to him.
Kristen Millares Young is a writer and journalist whose work
has been featured by the Guardian, the New York Times, KUOW 94.9-FM, City Arts
Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Miami
Herald ,TIME Magazine and the Buenos Aires Herald. Kristen was the researcher
for the NYT 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning story “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at
Tunnel Creek,” which also won a Peabody. Kristen graduated magna cum laude from
Harvard University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts from the History and
Literature Department, and from the Master of Fine Arts program at the
University of Washington. www.kristenmyoung.com
