vic osland: A VOICE RETURNED • Cleaver Magazine

Creative Nonfiction by vic osland
A VOICE RETURNED

As I fall back into writing prose, I forget what it is to write poetry. As I fall back in love with D, I forget what it is to be scared of him, but I will remember, of course I will remember, and it will be as devasting as the first time, as devastating as missing a baby’s first steps or first word. Rather, it will be hearing the baby’s first word but the baby’s first word is drink.

ii.

I write poetry in my head, braid constellations before laying them to paper. Prose allows for mistakes. Poetry holds me in contempt. Prose cradles my thoughts until they make sense. When D is a drunken beligerante, my capacity for holding both swells and contracts. I learn how much time before the container starts to crack.

iii.

What are we going to eat? D asks me for the third time. I’ve told you already.

iv.

The word echo is based on a Greek myth about a mountain nymph by the same name. She helped Zeus succeed in one of his extramarital affairs, and as punishment, Hera cursed her with the inability to say anything other than the last words she heard.

My grandmother asks me what grade I am in. I chuckle, and she mirrors the gape in my mouth, the laughing hum that comes out. I’m getting my masters, I say. Oh, right, she says. I knew that.

vi.

One version of the myth says that after Echo was cursed, she fell in love with Narcissus. Narcissus couldn’t love her back, only loved himself. His rejection caused her to lose herself completely, become only her voice, a voice which could only repeat the last words she heard.

vii.

Working memory allows us to hold small amounts of time and manipulate their contents to support reasoning, decision-making, and behaviour. This process includes keeping track of the beginning of a sentence for as long as it takes to reach the end of the sentence, therefore being able to hold a complete sentence at once.

viii.

I keep the gin locked in my car, down four flights of stairs, around a corner, up a hill, over the uneven ground of an unpaved parking lot. On days D works and I don’t, I sit down to write, alone in my apartment. I remove the bottle lid and pour an ounce, mix with tonic, try to explain that I need to keep track of D’s next drink for as long as it takes for him to reach his last.

ix.

My grandmother grabs my elbow, smiles up at me from five foot nothing, blind love in her squinty eyes, through glasses whose lens manipulation hasn’t been changed in years. Her grip is weak, and I remember when she weighed fifty pounds more than she does now, withering like an old tree in the slashing rain. She grabs my elbow and asks, what’s your name again?

Years before my grandmother was diagnosed, we lived two blocks away from her low-income housing apartment, and she stopped by every day on her walk, the walk she insisted on taking like a vitamin despite the arthritis in her right knee.

xi.

What are we going to eat tonight? D asks me. The fourth time.

xii.

Studies have shown alcohol negatively affects memory, not in recall, but in implementation. Chronic alcohol abuse leads to inefficient absorption of vitamin b1 by the liver and kidneys, which can sometimes result in memory loss, confusion, and unsteadiness.

xiii.

In another version of the myth, Pan falls in love with Echo, who rejects him. In retaliation, Pan tears her body to pieces and buries every part of her except her voice.

xiv.

When I reach for D and find myself buried under the green seasick stench of Forty Creek, I understand what it means to be rejected. Put down the bottle. Or, stop fucking drinking.

xv.

All I have is my voice.

xvi.

Rather, all I have are these memories, spilling from my fingers in wine-fueled bouts of typing. All I have are the nights I spend alone, the key to these memories, scraped together in some mixed drink of raw emotion in a glass he doesn’t know how to sip from.

xvii.

In high school I told Twitter, I’m not a writer, I just don’t want to forget. Long-term memory is the queening of episodic memory, its coronation into the depths of the hippocampus, able to be recalled either explicitly or implicitly, in waking moments or in dreams.

xviii.

Chronic alcohol abuse can structurally damage the hippocampus, reducing its capacity for brain cell generation and memory-making. Which is to say, what could once hold a gallon begins to leak after a litre.

xix.

When D and I are at the bar, and some asshole tells him, I won’t hit you but I could throw you, D keeps his cool long enough to leave, then pretends I am that asshole, looks into my dark eyes, and spits, you could throw me? I could fucking stab you in the fucking throat. The click of a pocket knife opening in his tattooed hand.

xx.

My grandmother asks me again what grade I am in. I’m getting my master’s, I say. In writing.

xxi.

Writing, she says. Good for you.

xxii.

Narcissus’s rejection of Echo reads as follows: Emoriar, quam sit tibi copia nostri.

xxiii.

May I die before I give you power over me.

xxiv.

Echo responds, Sit tibi copia nostri.

xxv.

I give you power over me.

xxvi.

What are we going to eat tonight? D texts me.

xxvii.

Chi dara fine al gran dolore?

xxviii.

Who will put an end to this great sadness?

xxix.

L’ore.

xxx.

The hours passing.

xxxi.

My grandmother sits across from me at the familiar diner. Toasted marshmallow carpet, trodden and worn in some places, russet brown booth, red cracked leather seats, and a mirror running the length of the restaurant, making it look twice as big as it is. My grandmother holds a tea pouch in her wrinkled hands. She holds it out to me, and I tuck it in the pot of hot water. Let it steep for a minute, now, I say. I like me tea hot, she says in her Newfoundland accent. Hot cup o’ tea. Same way I like me men. She rushes to cover her mouth, blood rushing to her cheeks while a laugh falls from between her fingers. Don’t we all, says my mother, sitting beside me. I like my men to be women, I want to say. I like my men to be sober, but that’s not quite true. I enjoy a drink, enjoy a few, would maybe like a non-man who could enjoy them too.

xxxii.

For my grandmother—for me—the hours pass.

vic osland (she/they) is a taurus sun, scorpio moon, pisces rising eldest child born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario. They’re working on a lyric memoir about queerness, obsession, and addiction, and a (nsfw!) essay from the collection can be found in pink disco magazine. They hold an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and they can be found on Instagram @vic.jpg and Storygraph @goforvic.