Who left the broken stroller on my front stoop? Once upon a time, bespoke for a well-born bundle of joy, with lambswool-encased memory foam seats providing a smooth retro-fitted ride for an infant tush, a sweet dollop of baby flesh surrounded by a sturdy canvas canopy the color of money, shielded from nasty elements both human and environmental. Cashmere’d parents leaned in and wiped away healthy spittle, reattached orthodontically approved pacifiers. Passing strangers leaned, not quite as closely, to ooh and aah. Now the stroller sports a patina of urban grime and stinks of utilitarian desperation. Fleece matted, memory foam flattened, canvas the color of despair. I don’t want to think about the rusty stains. No one leans in to look at those. I imagine the stroller hauling worldly possessions from shelter to subway to scaffolded seclusion; to anywhere and everywhere before losing one crucial Michelin tire, becoming a burden, no longer a useful beast, discarded here on my doorstep. I’ll do my part, put this cripple out of its misery, smash it, crack its spine, shove it inside a giant trash bag, while out there the stroller cycle will continue, a reminder of all that is good and right in the world.
What happened to the swallows? Just last year (or maybe it was five years ago, time being taffy these days) they were still here, dive-bombing like fighter jets, swooping so close to the sea grass that it pitched in a chaotic frenzy, setting the hairs on the back of my neck in a comforting tickle. The hoodoos still bear witness, still wait. Tiny bore holes line the craggy ridges of soft clay like acne scars. Perfectly round entrances to abandoned domiciles, waiting for feathered harbingers to build glorious nests from twigs, seaweed, surgical masks, and patience.
Where do we put this mess? A good friend lost ten beloved trees the other day, planted thirty-five years ago, ripped from the ground by a freak tornado. Where does she bury their corpses? Does she excavate the upturned timber, grind the live trunks and spread the wooden flesh along the edge of her property? Gather the boscage and build a wall, a dam, a fortress? A useless barrier against further climatic despair? Does she mash the bark into a paper pulp and scribble a letter upon it to The Editor in the Sky asking where oh where and why oh why and how oh how?
When did you get so ancient, mirror-crone? I think it was after you exhumed your daughter’s old but perfectly serviceable stroller from storage and gave it to that nice young man living under the bench in the park and definitely after the swallows disappeared but before you helped your friend make funeral wreaths from the fronds of her upturned cedars.
Why? I don’t know. You tell me. Send me a word. Show me a sign. ◆
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