They say that phoenixes are born from the ashes of their own death. That they start anew from the remains of what once was, are made stronger by the leftovers of the past. I wonder how they know when the time is right. Is it when they become too beaten down by life, burdened by the enormous weight of their current existence? Or is it because they have found the perfect moment, when the world is silent yet pulsing with energy, and they realize that forgiveness and new life can begin at this exact breathtaking moment.
I am wondering this while the doctor with heavy eyelids is speaking to me. It is hard to know what he is saying, but this is what I hear.
“You are dying. Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Stage IV. Six months. “
On the drive home the trees look different. I don’t know why I haven’t noticed before that they are so tall. I wonder how long it takes for trees to get tall. I wonder if they live close to their mom trees, and if they measure the length of their branches each year as they stretch towards the sky.
I am greeted at the front door by a pink tongue attached to eighty pounds of black Labrador fur. I have heard that dogs can smell cancer cells as they bubble and pop inside your body. I wonder if they smell like tar, sticky and toxic sweet. I wonder if Koda can smell them oozing through my veins as he nuzzles his snout against my neck, as he smears my tears across my face with a wet, rough tongue.
At nights when I can’t sleep I like to try and remember the best parts of my childhood. The way we used to sit splayed in the driveway, our limbs too long for our bodies, our knobby elbows on our knobby knees and our rocket red popsicles dripping down our fingers, creating syrupy puddles on the cement. The way the asphalt on the street would melt into a black goop in the summer sun and stick between our toes as we raced each other barefoot down the block.
They say that when fear, regret, guilt, all live in a body that they poison it. That it becomes a solid stone of hate that ferments in the pit of the stomach, its contaminated tendrils reaching out even to the very tips of the fingers. Toxic.
I cannot understand how the phoenix is able to burst free from the ashes of its past. I would expect it to be smothered, suffocated, crushed. The weight of all of its terrible decisions, the knowledge of failure and missed opportunity, the crumbly, smoky disappointment of those closest to you.
I take Koda and my anxiety for a walk. Koda pulls in one direction while my anxiety drags in the other. My therapist tells me that only I can hold myself back. He tells me that the only way to heal is to forgive myself.
“Why do you think you blame yourself for you sister’s death?”
“Because it’s my fault.”
“Samantha, your sister died of a brain aneurysm. You couldn’t have done anything to cause that.”
“I did.”
What I don’t tell him, what I haven’t told anyone, is I saw you that day. That I took out my anger on you, my frustrations. I didn’t want your help. I told you that trying to become an artist was a hopeless pipedream because you were never that good. Because I couldn’t handle my own insecurities I picked at yours until they were bleeding and raw.
I don’t tell anyone else these things because I don’t want to remember. So I take a mental shovel and I dig a hole deep and wide and I cover them in loamy mental soil and bury them with my anguish.
On restless afternoons when I have nothing to do now that I’ve quit my job, I sit and drink a rum and coke, and remember when we blew those bubbles that were suppose to stick to your fingers. We pursed our lips and watched as they struggled their sluggish way out of the bubble wand. They splattered on the carpet of your bedroom floor, liquid plastic suctioning onto the carpet threads. Mom was so mad.
They say that forgiveness is a healing balm. If that’s true then I don’t deserve it. But as I lie here, my breath rattling in my chest, I reach my mind out past the farthest reaches of the stars; I imagine my mind shimmering past the planets, fast as a comet, and I burst past clouds the color of sunset, and I ask for your forgiveness. I ask to have a chance to read a bedtime story to you again. I ask to fall asleep next to your angel face as you hold my cream colored teddy bear close to your chest, the one I let you borrow because you couldn’t sleep, the one you named marshmallow. When I close my eyes I smell sulfur and smoke as hot ash prickles my skin.
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