''Blackout''

Increasing the doubts of the complexity apparent inside me, I sat once before near lakes that now haunt me, who find my appearance lying there on the ground, disgusting and bloated. The memories I've collected are the creatures I fish out from there, and I do so for two reasons: one, for sheer amusement, and another just to hope to find one that I hope I've forgotten about.

Yet I never do; I've been here far too long to even try to. My late wife was down there, and I could still feel her arms envelop me in the calm serenity that she carried with her, like the small flower of colver I gave to her one random day, simply because I adored her so. I can still hear her yelling, pissed off and angry at me for forgetting once again that she is not only my wife . . . but a friend. Then the countless times I'd tell her that I would just go fishing to this lake I always walk to, barely feet from our home. Returning with a few pounds of fish, a tired head, and small fragments of the moonlight, I ask her whether or not she'd want to come with me next time I leave for the lake, under another night.

''No,'' she responds. ''You've too much time on your hands for me to take. . .'' But it was then that I'd just lift her from her feet, pick her up gently and carry her to wherever she wanted, her slight chuckles a sound that echoed through the emptiness of our home. Only the smallest fraction of the entire area, I've nothing to do but walk down the steep hill our home is placed atop of to reach our little lake. 

There, we left time to allow us to make the things we have there; one of those being our very lives. 


I met her there. I married her there. We lived and breathed the entire area--it was ours, above anything else. 

During a pleasantly warm night, about half a decade ago, I remember telling her how happy we were together. She agreed. She smiled, the same vibrant smile that was such a beauty to me that it was in between the light of the moon, and the sun; neither more bright, nor more dim than either one. Her light existed in the space between twilight and dawn, for I knew that she had a lovely type of light within her. One that I saw even as she toiled away at my heart. Reducing it from an organic beating machine, to a simple, flat plane of glass that I let her shatter and crumble into pieces beneath me. 

I let her since I was too afraid to speak anything against it. And even when she went on and said that she'd never return to our home, I never rose my voice a moment. To the very end, I just sat there and became the punching bag to her words. To her slaps and punches at me for continuing to forget that she was not only my wife . . . but my friend. Words she once said after we got married, not a soul there but ours. The condescending roar that erupted then from that sweet, light voice of hers that I swear I remembered from not only her laughter, but her cries of happiness for the both of us.

But I treated her as though she didn't deserve it. I made it seem like we were gonna make it, that we were gonna move to a bigger house only a little bit farther from the lake. ''Just you wait, just you wait,'' I told her. ''We'll be livin' soon.'' But then, she would walk over to me with her face purple and her hair a greasy mess saying, ''Hun, we're living now! None of this we need! Don't you see?! I -- I don't wanna tell you again, please. . .'' 

So I would walk back to the lake, to pick up more fish to sell, to raise enough to buy my dream for us, with her cries -- now of more apparent despair and turmoil -- beating as sudden waves from behind the door I closed between us. I left her, but I promised that I'd return -- like I did every night -- but when I did, I didn't want to step through that door, even when she knew I was just outside. That door, that one small wooden door of ours in our humble home was the only thing stopping me from coming inside and telling her that I had a good day, or a bad one, but most of the time she knew neither of us needed such words. Our faces told the whole story, being ones of mostly aggression and nervousness, with the subtle remark of fear over our heads. It stopped me, the door did, from being hurt by her. 


Catching the memory of another night from the waters of the lake, I fished it up to see yet another moment of our time together. The fish itself was a tiny one, with two huge eyes and silky scales, gasping for air like the both of us did in the place where we breathed most of our lives away. That home of ours being but a few feet from here, we'd say.

We'd always say. We'd talk, invariably we did, but that didn't mean we spoke to each other. Our voices passed, either as whispers or screams, from one ear, and out the other -- only needing another's message for the time being. Forgetting what we both said but a day later.


But lately, it was never like that. Perhaps it was worse.

She no longer lives with me. Our lake is now mine, even if I don't feel like it is. I haven't heard from her for more than a year now, and I feel that won't change anytime soon. The fishing pole I use now was fashioned with a small trinket we carved out together, and it was a little metal disc she attached near the bottom of it, and on it was written one word. One tiny word, that I'm forced to look at whenever I cast a new line: ''Hope''. The keychain rustled as it moved past, and my line was cast out to sea--the word lingering, however.

The ''h'' and the ''p'' were carved by myself. The other letters, by her. My shaky hands, unsteady yet previously ecstatic, made the letters appear just as shaky and quite scrambled.  It was as if some child had tried to carve it. Yet her letters were elegant, flowing so blissfully that they could ride among the gentle and lovely tides of the waves, floating with the greatest of ease in the midst of the simple seas. 

With every cast, I saw that word, giving me the ability to return home to her with at least of one part of me being happy and content with the fact that she would still be there when I return to what was our home . . . because I knew she'd be waiting. Like she always would.

Things have changed since then. 

A month before she left, a fierce tropical storm came in from the coast and we were the first victims. The storm sat upon us for its own sheer amusement, it seemed, and the violent rain and winds prevented me from fishing for days. Our power left, and it savagely stole our optimism along with it. Our roof leaked terribly, and some days we'd wake up to having feet of water in our home, despite the steep hill we stood at the top of. During this time, we had nowhere else to go--neither of us could surely leave the house, for we'd risk our lives. The home we knew was horribly dark at night, for our power was gone. It became warmer than the summer the two of us knew too well. The rain spoke good morning and plead us a goodnight, both with the same voice of howling wind beside it. Rain itself beat our home, an abuse that, although tormentous, wasn't enough to keep up with the trauma we'd do to each other on a nightly basis.

In the wake of the storm, after the nights spent crying to sleep and waking to yet another one of her screams of pain, she left as soon as she could. My name left her lips, not only a calling but a sudden goodbye of my name from her memory. I gave the money I saved up and she went on her way, refusing with everything in her power to take me with her.


Sometimes, upon this lake, I'd still catch the remaining pleasant memories of her. These, however, would be the fish I'd let go so they can continue to live . . . as long as I didn't keep them out of the water for too long, leaving them to die as I drowned them with my life. Most of the time, I'd wake up just when the sun did to walk down here and fish, but not for pay or for fun--but to recall the travels I had with someone. Yes, although the power in my home is now here, there are many things which I am missing. Fishing for them will not let me get those things back, as much as I want to retrieve them. Yet I lie here and attempt to recollect the memories which I have thrown out to sea. For quite possibly, I once thought, the better of me.

I was always a man who loved and lived to fish; never since my twentieth birthday was there a day where I didn't. I am fifty-four now, and I still do. Every night when I return home, to the one I recognized with every kind of light but the shimmering glare of the light emitted from her smile, I sit at the foot of our bed and cry. More than the clouds that float endlessly over me tend to do. She was here then, when our power was gone yet our lives together--our time not apart. Not back then.


The waves at the edge of the coast where I've fished for nearly most of my life were more calm than the ones of yesterday. A few clouds in the sky, I could see my reflection quite clearly in the small puddles that the rain left for me on the concrete floor surrounded by patches of grass. I cast my line and I let it sink into the water yet again. The keychain's face shot a sudden white glare with the sunlight. Night was to approach in a matter of hours, I knew it. My daily travel home would come soon, as it always did. I'd wake up the next day to this, and I'd be okay with returning to a bed absent of another; of seeing the sun with none to greet me but the day itself. Going to and from the vivid dreams of dawn, I sat here by the lake and pretended the power never came back on.