The Plot

inspired by the Moon Card

I’ve spent the last few hours debating what I wanted to do with this piece of writing. I wrote and submitted a first draft for the The Rebis’ Moon edition, and they passed.

I considered sitting on it, revising it, and submitting it to a few other places. But it felt fitting that it found its way back to me on today’s new moon. So I spent some time editing it and decided to share it here.

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The Plot

The granite is cool on my bare shoulders. It’s July. The air is thick. Sweat drops onto my chest. How many years will pass before the tree behind me grows tall enough to provide shade? Will I be dead before it happens?

I want to ease more of my body against the stone. To be supported.

But I hesitate. As I usually do.

How much pressure can my parents’ name and Mary Oliver’s words take before it topples?

People kick gravestones over.

If a foot could do it, my fat body is certainly too much.

I stand up.

I don’t understand cemeteries. I never have.

I didn’t find the sort-by-price feature on the funeral home computer fast enough to be spared the sight of the $40,000 Promethean.

My dad did not end up in the Promethean.

Neither did my mom.

I opted for the same make and model they chose for my brother.

Who was I to second-guess their taste?

It was oak or mahogany. I can’t be certain.

I don’t want to be here. When I die that is. But there’s room if I want it.

Each plot comes with two spots for cremated remains.

What a steal. Just like the land my family is decomposing in.

I won’t change my mind.

I want to be burned.

Deposited along a busy summer shoreline.

My elbow wafting into a peanut butter and jelly.

My big toe mixing with a white man’s Bud Light.

The rest finding its way into the bellies of crustaceans.

They’re not picky.

I learned this working in a fish market, watching lobsters awaiting their death feast on each other.

Those cannibals would love my cellulite.

A car door slams.

A dog jumps out and promptly pisses on the “NO DOGS ALLOWED” sign.

What time was it anyway?

A steamy shit arrives next.

Another person may have taken offense, but I have more in common with that dog than the dead people beneath my feet.

Who are we to dictate where an animal defecates?

Who was the Catholic Church to tell me I could still go to heaven as long as I didn’t act on my gayness?

A loophole logged in high school theology class, while simultaneously wondering if my period had leaked through my wool uniform skirt or if my vagina was just sweaty from the lack of air circulation.

Now, here I am, sweating, trying, on ways to tell my parents’ corpses that I had watched the moon rise on a beach with a woman I fell for. That love was possible for me.

I’ve been a dog pissing on signs longer than I realized.

A primal ache rises.

I want to lay down on the prickly grass.

To be held by the earth between my brother and parents.

But my body doesn’t move.

What the hell am I doing here?

I’m slightly startled by the sound of my own voice.

I know the answer.

Living…

in defiance of the system that handed my mother a folded American flag with pride as she buried her son, his skull shattered by the bullets they taught him to fire with military precision.

in defiance of the silence perpetuated by Irish Catholic culture, that created a father who could not feel unless alcohol coursed through his veins.

in defiance of the lesson taught by rocks that pelted my mother on her walk home from school, one that caused her to hate her body and fear the shape of mine.

I notice the moon crest over the horizon.

I step out from between the two stones, and head toward my car.