Satan and a Wedding Dress

April. The Lake’s puzzle begins to break apart and those pieces not landlocked like stones smoothed and large enough to sleep on sing a steady breeze through a chandelier, a jar of sea glass in the pulse of a tremor.

From the black rocks above, the waves are arches, frozen mid-rage, from one side of the cove to the other. The water thrusts beneath and sucks out more of the puzzle.

It’s been so long since movement, since touch. The waves roll in pull out topple over one another and what’s black is blue then green then a white flash across a boulder. Gone.

To jump, even in two months, will be a test to my heart. I’ll emerge from the water with what would be a scream if I could breathe but will instead be just a reflexive gasp. Every muscle means shore. A quick scale up a cliff wall. It’ll remind me I’m alive.

Lately, I’ve been praising Satan. Milton’s Satan, I should say. I love him for his irony, for his binaries, that he understands Eden more than pre-fall Adam or Eve. He knows the sound of hell, and when he hears Eden, he knows what it really sounds like. Of course I don’t mean to say that life is black and white, but there must first be a presence to understand an absence—simply true.

Lately, my sons have been pointing fake guns in my face and with their mouths popping the triggers. From the center of our home, an iceberg. At the edges, a fence of broken bottles.

The oldest is 13. He wants to spoon with me.
The youngest is 11. He wants to change his name ‘til he belongs.

Puzzle. I’ve recorded the Lake’s changes. I’ve stopped bringing my camera. To sit. To listen. That’s what I want. I cannot relay to you the delicate sound of the pieces brushing against each other. I want to say it’s the train of a wedding dress or the rain falling on Cinderella’s slipper, but I’ve already mentioned my crush on Satan here, so it just seems wrong.

I will say that to understand alone, you must first be crowded. To understand the thaw, you must first be frozen.