By Jennifer Anne Gordon
If my grief were a wish, it would be that I was taller, not willowy with long thin arms, but sturdier like Gordons’. I had only seen them all grouped together once in my life. Arriving en masse at my father’s funeral. They were stern, and otherworldly. They could have fought off dark elves in wars that didn’t exist in our world.
If my grief were a meal, it would be the time my mother was at Bingo and my father gave me a block of sharp cheddar cheese to eat. He did not give me a knife; he was afraid I would hurt myself. I nibbled on the edges like a mouse. Later, when he was in the bathroom shaving, I ate a handful of raw ground beef out of the refrigerator and got sick.
He gave me a cool towel for the back of my neck; for some reason it smelled like sickness before it ever touched my skin. A terry cloth harbinger.
If my grief were an injury, it would be my torn meniscus, and bruised hip. The time I fell on the icy cobblestone running to chase a man who never loved me back.
If my grief were an ex-boyfriend, it would be Eric, the first of many drummers. It would be an afternoon in his basement where we watched Pet Sematary, and I felt pretty.
If my grief were a dance, it would be the bolero, it would push and pull like waves. It would smell like the ocean. It would be my father in long pants never showing us his legs, lumpy with shrapnel.
If my grief were a summer, it would be when I was thirteen and we heard a rumor of the Kelley Street Rapist, and then heard another rumor that the rapist lived in the dried-out storm drain in the sandpits by my house. The sandpits that buzzed because of the power lines, the sandpits that sounded like the time I slammed the door and was swarmed with hornets.
If my grief were a bad idea, it would be that same summer, when a group of us kids went to the sandpits to find the rapist, bring him to justice. We didn’t find anyone, of course, but later that night I told my parents where I had been.
“Those power lines will give you cancer.”
It’s all my father said.
If my grief were a panic attack it was that first one, that night, it would be the pressure in my head, I was already convinced there was a tumor the size of a lemon in there—buzzing.
If my grief were a bug, it would be a spider, the one that traveled home secretly with me from Belize, the one my mother wanted to keep as a pet. She named him Simon.
If my grief were a page of a coloring book it would be that one that looked like my mom, a woman with short hair and a ’70s pantsuit doing groceries. The one that looked so much like her that I couldn’t color it. I would just cry and miss her even though she was in the next room.
I do that even now, she doesn’t look like an uncolored page from a book anymore, but she feels like one.
If my grief were story, it wouldn’t be. It would be a song.
If my grief were a building it would be empty except for dusty boxes inexplicably filled with folded baby clothes that somehow smell like dust and sunshine.
If my grief were a scar, it would be the crescent on my chin, the one I got when I picked up a baby chipmunk and it bit me on the face.
If my grief were an ex-boyfriend, it wouldn’t be. It would be Amanda, her skin, soft blue like the moonlight.
If my grief were a dream, it would be the one where I fall through the floor and get stuck halfway, the dream where I hear footsteps but can’t see who they come from.
Maybe if I were taller.