by Jared Povanda
- Originally published as Tears for Tadpoles in Soft Cartel, April 2019
- Content warnings: Death after illness, grief
I fume in the doorway, my bag of takeout weighted and glorious as the ghosts turn their glass-gazes on me. The sun through the window refracts wild off their eyes, beams blinding, scattering. Something dark curls in my stomach.
We’re here to help, Right says.
“Why?” I ask.
I don’t wait for the answer — it’s my home, so I go inside and sit. I’m starved.
You need help, Right says.
Arancini. Fettuccine Alfredo. A few stuffed breadsticks. I eat one before I unpack the rest, cheese burning the roof of my mouth.
Yes, echoes Left. If you’d like to talk about Ryan —
“No,” I growl. A slice of lasagna. Baked ziti. A chocolate mousse cake for dessert.
Remembering him, sometimes, Right says, will ache like a cold morning in midwinter.
And sometimes, Left says, a deeper sadness in its voice, remembering him will take everything you are to sea.
I don’t want to cry, not again, but there are tears on my face anyway, and I scrub at them until I’m blotchy. Hearing his name is a spear through the gut.
“How come he had to die?” I ask. I’m shaking so bad. “Why did he have to go?” I bite into one of the arancini, barely tasting it. “How come some shitty ghosts get to barge in here and fuck up everything?” My nails dig into my palms. My jaw aches.
The ghosts hover, silent, sauce dripping onto my wrists. Red-orange, blue veins. Ryan could take both of my wrists in one hand. He called me his little bird. Little bird, little bird, won’t you sing?
“He forgot the word for tears one time.” I turn to the ghosts, snot everywhere, face a fracture. “Once, he forgot, and he pointed to his eyes, you know? And his lips were so pointy, if that makes any sense, and he ran these fucking pretty fingers over his face, and he goes, ‘What do I mean, James? What are they? Tadpoles?’”
Did his kisses taste like chocolate mousse? Left asks.
I tip my head back to stare at the shifting light on the ceiling, hoping I snap off at the neck. That’s what grief is.
“Yes,” I say. “They did. He did. We kissed until he was fluent in English. We kissed until I swiped the Portuguese off his tongue. We did everything we could.”
Grief is his family having his funeral back in Portugal and not having the cash for the flight.
Grief is packing up his stuff — pressing that one comfy sweatshirt to my nose one last time — before his sister came, wearing regret like a shawl, to drive his loaded car to the end of the street before making the final turn.
“Grief,” I say to them, “is two ghosts sitting on my bed. Two ghosts, coming every day for the past three months. I can’t even eat in peace.”
We care, Right whispers, eyes like the sun. I can’t meet them.
We care, Left doesn’t whisper, but rises, body an ocean’s foamed swirl. We love you.
Left sets a hand on my right shoulder, and Right places a hand on my left, and I look at the two of them the best I can through my squinting — the two of them passing light between them, through me, off the mirrors they are, the mirrors they’ve been forcing me to look at myself in, my ugly reflection stuck inside the glass. I feel them in my chest. Head. Heart. Their mouths are perfect dark Os. If I had a spoon, I’d feed them my side of minestrone, and then I’d feed them the spoon.
It’s okay, Right says.
It’s okay to grieve him, Left says.
And I can’t help but sob again, taking in deep, deep breaths, like I used to before, with Ryan, and before I can answer, the ghosts are turning my tears to tadpoles. In a spill of late afternoon light, we watch these tiny levitating bodies swimming patterns on top of my pasta, the ziti getting soggy. The tadpoles coordinate to form little birds and big oceans and there’s me and there’s Ryan, and there’s us kissing and kissing and kissing. I watch until the noodles absorb all of the water. The salt. Until the ghosts leave me — for now.
And then I finish my meal.
Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from upstate New York. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and his work has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals including Wigleaf, The Citron Review, and Milk Candy Review. You can find him online @JaredPovanda, jaredpovandawriting.wordpress.com, and in the Poets & Writers Directory.
