Jay Hodges: AS YOU WIND DOWN • Cleaver Magazine

Nonfiction by Jay Hodges
AS YOU WIND DOWN

Planets whirl, asteroids careen, the sun and the moon come and go. Tectonic plates shift, volcanoes spew, icebergs calve, droughts creep, humidity swaddles. Hail pings automobiles, and lightning blitzes planes. Ghost ships drift in watery deserts, fish cannibalize each other, and blooming algae stifle lakes and ponds. Sunscreen is advised.

The room is dim in the breaking day. I know without fully seeing you when I stand up from my palette at the foot of your hospital bed. This is the day, maybe this is the hour. Or maybe it will be the following hour. Or the hour after.

Trees grow leaves, shed limbs, fall over. They are reduced to chairs, pencils, and toothpicks. Flowers are steeped in hot water, repotted, pressed in books, mowed down, worn on hats, and in lapels. Seeds sprout, eggs hatch. Farmworkers dig up beets, peanuts, potatoes. A dust storm sweeps over a prairie. Someone drives a stretching road home.

I count to eleven between your breaths. Sixteen. Thirteen. Nineteen. Your left eyebrow twitches. Or maybe it doesn’t. What would it mean if it had?

Young marsupials squirm in pouches. Wildebeests quench thirst, as do giraffes and vampire bats. Meerkats scoop out burrows. Birds architect nests and smash into windows. Squirrels rip into pink insulation. Deer dodge bullets. Octopuses change color, shoot ink. Someone slices through a tentacle in a restaurant. Kangaroos box, monkeys chatter and steal from backpacks, sperm whales snooze vertically.

The dog and the cat and the cat will me with their eyes to deliver breakfast as I spread a quilt over your legs and torso. My mother won a prize for that quilt, your favorite. I tuck one end under your feet.

People celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. Flirt, meet up, hook up, throw up, shoot up, give up. They sign prenups, marry, separate. Call in sick. Make hard decisions and wish it wasn’t so. They disagree, and they give in. They celebrate and smack candy-filled piñatas and hide their true feelings. Someone slips into despair while someone else cries, Hallelujah!

I want to shake you back. Instead, I cup your cheek. I rest a hand on your chest. I tell you I’m stepping away for a few minutes, and wonder if I’m making the right decision to feed the animals now instead of waiting until after what is happening has happened. Instead of waiting until after you.

Somewhere, someone switches on a lamp and records their dream in a notebook. Someone else shrieks awake. Meanwhile, soda is shoplifted for fun, credit is denied, cars are waxed, and homes are broken into. Terminal diagnoses are shared, as are clean bills of health, stock market predictions, bags of popcorn, and lollipops. Futures are told and wasted. Lots of us are shot with guns.

We’ve run out of both dog and cat food, except for the partially filled cans in the refrigerator left over from last night’s dinner. I empty them into their bowls and pull apart a chicken thigh with my fingers because it’s faster than cutting it up. For the first time, I don’t microwave their meals.

Workers accept and leave positions. Redact documents and breach contracts. Coupons are clipped, grocery carts are filled, 9-1-1 calls are made. Wrinkles are steamed out of shirts, zippers are zipped, pockets are stuffed. Someone sticks out their thumb for a ride.

I realize the futility of dribbling water into your mouth, of swabbing your lips and gums. Your hospice nurse said yesterday to stop giving you fluids. I do it anyway and then note the time and amount of liquid on a new page of a legal pad. I’m not sure why I keep this log.

Newborns are intubated, breastfed, coddled, and abandoned. They’re assigned names, gender, and citizenship. Babies mess their onesies, and a soiled diaper is dropped out a car window in a grocery store parking lot. Preschoolers color out of lines and spread colds. Kindergartners eat paste and play grocery store. Teeter-totters rise and fall, and abandoned swings sway. Older kids worry who they’ll sit with during lunch, practice lockdown, pass notes, skip class, develop crushes, and copy answers. Billions agonize over the future.

I check to see if the sheets are dry. You’re so dehydrated, I’d be surprised if they weren’t. What difference would it make either way? I’ve heard feces slips out as the dying die.

Graves are dug and bodies are autopsied, and burned. Organs are harvested and limbs amputated. Bad news breaks. Lies are told. Promises are kept. Praise is heaped, and affection surges. Sex acts we can’t imagine are performed. People are dismissive and condescending. Unforgiving. Most of the living keep on living but others, pushed to the limit, choose not to.

I count again, expecting the rattle I’ve read about that doesn’t come. Only long pauses when I think there won’t be another inhale. But then there is. I ignore the buzz of my cell phone. I stop counting at fifty.

Leaf blowers blow, and the mailman again doesn’t snap the mailbox shut. Neighbors eat breakfast tacos, skip rope, and stroll down our street. Cardinals gather on the cement bowl for a communal drink. Sun angles across the floor, the foundation shifts. Our menagerie snoozes and digests. Dust settles on our shelves.

Your head slumps toward me, and water I squirted into your mouth trickles out from between your lips. I dab at it with a sheet corner.

Everything out there stops. Then, in a whoosh, it rebounds: snoozing, angling, gathering, settling, purifying, persisting, agonizing, spreading colds, sharing lollipops and terminal diagnoses, shrieking awake, crying Hallelujah!, shooting up and heaping praise, squirming in pouches, cannibalizing, drifting on watery deserts.

And you have simply ceased to be.

Jay Hodges is a book coach, artist, and writer in Austin, Texas. He is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, a Yaddo fellow, and the co-creator of the award-winning documentary Trinidad. His writing has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Cutleaf, Time Out New York, and In These Times. His essay “Our Own Country” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and included in the “Notable Essays and Literary Fiction” list in The Best American Essays 2022.