after splash
by jj pena
one month after you’ve killed yourself, i’ll celebrate my birthday with a hot stranger i’ll meet online hours before. he'll drive me up a mtn top so we can look over the city & listen to music, talk. he’ll tell me about his life + hopes + dreams, but i won’t recall anything. i will only remember one conversation that night, & i’ll think memory is somehow tethered by a string. to go back there, all i have to do is tug—& i’ll be back in the front seat of his car, hearing him say, look at how beautiful the city is at night. it’s like a garden of starlight down there.
two weeks after you’ve killed yourself, i’'ll spend an afternoon fighting with my supervisor, who won’t think a funeral is a good enough of an excuse to miss a staff meeting. she’ll even ask for a copy of the police report, thinking i’ve lied. later, after scolding me, she’ll tell me she knows about grief, hand me a poem, & say, read this when gravity crushes you.
48 hours after you’ve killed yourself, i’ll drive up a big hill on new year’s eve to watch the city firework. the night sky will morph into colorful cranes popping, which will make me think about migrations: how death is just another season we travel to.
an hour after finding your dead body— head & neck belted by plastic—i’ll think of our hiking excursion to havasupai months before. during our trip, i had to remind you sadness had no place in the desert. look around us, i said, you’re free here. but you protested, said escaping from heartbreak was impossible. you cried. i left you alone because my mother once told me, tears were a eucalyptus balm for the heart. once your grief quieted, i led you to one of the small bodies of water running through the canyon, let the blue & green water milk the sorrow out of your feet & bury it deep into the sandy banks. i sat next to you, as you splashed your feet in the water, & i joked, to get over your ex, you have to become a waterfall. be full of violence, but able to offer sugar water. you braided your hair after that, said, you’d use the rest of our trip to try to figure out how to walk alone in the world. as you hiked alone to the top of a waterfall, i thought you figured this out, especially after you jumped off bright—like sunlight finally puddling over a mountain.
jj pena is a writer based in las vegas. jj's won a few contests and lost too many to count. jj is working on their never ending manuscript.