V. H. King's Ink

A wax would have guttered down into its own goop by now.  Bennett had thought about it, confident ki wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.  But ki wasn’t as confident in kis ability to get out of bed again, so ki’d decided to go with the electric tea candles.  Bennett missed the waver of the flame.  The little curl of smoke wiggling its way toward the ceiling.  The way ki could smell the subtle presence of something burning. 

There was the incense, but Bennett didn’t want to use it.  Bennett wanted to keep everything exactly how it had been since the last time… The bedroom was too heavy to enter but impossible to stay away from.  Bennett couldn’t think of it as kis, or as theirs, or with any words at all.  On the other side of the doorframe was a life interrupted.  Maybe on both sides. 

Air conditioning drones in the background.  If not the air conditioner, the dehumidifier.  If not that, then the fridge.  Sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains in the late afternoons, dust motes twinkling in their aerialist routines every evening. The moon snuck between tree branches on its way across the horizon.

Bennett hadn’t shuttered the windows or covered mirrors. Time could go on without kim for a little while.  Ki didn’t mind watching folks leave for work, drop off kids at their relatives, get deliveries, go for afternoon walks with their dogs. Pizza deliveries and teenagers dropping each other off and middle schoolers moping around picnic tables.

I swing my legs up onto the park bench, stretching them out as I rest my elbow on the back of the bench.  Bennett is in kis room, staring at a flame that won’t waver.  Just like the love that has kim trapped.

“Do you know how long I’ve been here?”

Appearing in people’s houses unannounced isn’t my favorite tactic.  Abina already thinks I’m a thief, so maybe breaking and entering is part of how he imagines I do this, but I don’t like to startle people.  Even when people want me around, they’re surprised to see me face to face.  I’ve been told it takes some getting used to.    

“A few days. Maybe a week.” 

Bennett rolls onto kis back, staring up at the ceiling. The perfect-postured flame reflects in kis eyes.  I hear the rustle of blankets and pillows as Bennett burrows deeper into kis little nest.  It makes me smile.

“I could feel…a nearness.  And I knew it wasn’t Grega, but it felt like she—was with you?  Had sent you?”

A quiet sigh.

“Either way, thanks for the company.”

“Of course.”

Silence settles in, and I can feel Bennett’s mind reeling back in from its wandering through the years collapsed into moments, a lifetime compressed into ever-present memories.  Down-shifting to the standing water of the last few weeks. Golden and heavy. Warm. Soothing. 

Stale, like nostalgia. 

“Were you going to wait until I noticed you?” Bennett yawned. “Am I supposed to invite you in or something?”

“You can if you want, but you don’t have to.”

“I’ll think about it.” Bennett drummed kis fingers on kis stomach.  “Grega used to do that, you know.  Think with her hands.  I loved that about her. They way she could think while half-tickling me, and how she never decided things frivolously. She cared about the things she enjoyed, and she had such gentle ways of showing that she cared about me.”

Bennett’s thoughts pull together again, regrouping as ki remembers what it was ki had sensed in the feeling of nearness.  Something like a hand on kis shoulder, but not touching kim.  Weight where the hand should be, if not warmth.  Similar pressure on his forehead, or in the middle of his back.

It hadn’t felt like being haunted.  More so like a nurse tending to bandages and checking IVs while a patient fluttered in and out of a deep sleep.  Grief didn’t flatten Bennett anymore. Ki could stand with it, move through rooms and meal-time routines. The bedroom had a particular hold, its stillness hooking into Bennett’s ankles and directing his steps back to the mattress.

“The world moving on is a good thing. Comforting, even.”  Bennett gripped duvet covers and pulled kimself upright.  “Do you mind coming up? Or…appearing?”

“Not at all.” I unfold myself from the park bench, feeling the criss-cross pattern of the metal on my backside.  “Want me to bring you anything?”

“No.” Bennett shuffled back so ki could prop kimself against the headboard.  “Maybe afterwards, but for now…I think it’s just listening.”

I nibble on my water bottle’s straw, humming a little to myself as I rounded the green space between houses.  I’d have to tell Rekita that reaping wasn’t as gruesome as people think.  And it wasn’t stealing, either.  Reaping was all about carrying something away before it became poisonous. 

Souls didn’t ascend like arrows shot up into the sky, and there was no staircase zigzagging the way to heaven.  There were so many pockets and parallels and corridors and corners in the cosmos. Space was just that—space.  Room to grow, when a person was ready. And if they chose, they didn’t have to reap what they’d sown.