Clayton 27

Your Whole Life, Swinging

By Conyer Clayton

You are washing dishes and feel strangely calm. The water is warm and the way the sink slowly empties as the drying rack equally fills is satisfying in a simple and tangible way. You look out the window and there is a great dog walking by. A+ dog. The dog looks back at his owner and they share a little moment, and you, by proximity, share this little moment too.

Then, the darkness in your periphery shifts. The man who stands at the corner of your awareness is there, again. You feel his presence with all the certainty of a symptom—another creeping unsearchable feeling you'll never admit to anyone. When you turn to look, he's gone.

He only appears when you start to feel hope, just enough to cast a shadow, and your familiar dread comes with him. You turn but it's nothing. Always nothing. You keep this, like most things, to yourself.

The dread stays a little longer after each visit, becoming familiar, settling into the patterns of your day. When you were enjoying your coffee, its warmth and weight in your hands, the way the grinds settle against the bottom of the mug becomes dread. When you were absorbed in your work, a sudden sound outside; you remember your body, you remember your dread. You look out the window again and the dog is gone. The water in the sink has lost its heat. You let it slip down the drain.

One afternoon you're driving home after a decent day at work. You're even humming a little tune, letting your body sway in the seat. You are zoning out, mechanically taking your normal route home, when just off the exit on the other side of the lake, you notice something glimmering amongst the trees. You try to look but cannot seem to focus your eyes on it. The trees come in and out of view, a hand held up against the too-bright sky. The light dappled; the sun beaming through shaking branches. You were a child standing under a tree, squinting upwards. You shake your head, a memory under a memory under a blanket, tucked in. You've got to keep your eyes on the road.

But your mind remains in a state of light-flecked static as you drive home, go to bed, wake up. The next day you force your eyes back to that ridge as you speed past. You see that glimmer again, feel yourself stretching for something but you just can't reach it. You blink and blink and blink. Just trees. Only light. No branches to grab. Why are trees so hard to look at?

I have to feed the baby eagles. You trapped them in a nest in the damp, dark bottom of the well. Do you remember the ball, the branch, the knowing, the front door shutting? Remember where they landed? A thud as I opened my eyes.

My pendulum only moves on your good days, swings less and less lately. I glory in its stillness. The beauty of the pendulum's stillness, I tear myself away. Take my trip to the forest floor, scamper down. Thick branches. Let a hunk of raw meat fall to the bottom once an hour on the hour no matter the time of day. If I miss a feeding, the eagles will grow up.

Today, the eagles screech louder than normal. I am stooped in an age I no longer remember. My pendulum is swinging steadily. We exist with a growing intent. Restless. Unrooted. The eagles are hungry and screaming, stretching their wings out, threatening to leave. I should step away from the trees, my home, towards you, away from the well and its reminders. Tugging into the past, the mirror perched at its edge and shining in the light. It beckons you back, begging you to look into your own stricken face and then past it, down into the well, to the eagles and the meat. But I want you to look at me. Only me. The single step I take that brings me to you. I don't take that step today. Today, I angle the mirror towards you.

You do a google search of the lake and find nothing but a small hiking trail encircling it. When you think of the glimmering, the trees, the darkness in your periphery, the dread settled on your life begins to feel like security, and you wonder if you want it. There is this feeling, and there is whatever stands behind it. Your hand slipping off the branch.

You call in sick to work and drive to the edge of the trail, parking on the crumbling shoulder of an old road no one seems to drive down. You've brought nothing but water and your comfortable dread. Your homey, sticky dread. The glimmer is at the ridge. You can feel your whole life swinging.

As you ascend, the trees press in on you with their thinness. The man in your periphery is edging closer, standing just beyond every turn of the trail. You are out of breath when you hear their ragged voices; you recognize their cries as the same one that escaped your mouth. You finally remember.

Your own call leads you to the top of the ridge on your hands and knees.

There is a small well nestled in a tight copse of pines. In the mirror at the top of a well, the eagles are reflected—the light catches their beaks, their eyes—it glints off their feathers and you can hardly look at it, you can feel their insistent hunger. The raw beauty of their youth and craving is almost too much to handle. So for a moment, you look away. You turn your face back to the sunless forest.

You turn your head and dread steps in, and this time, it stays.

The eagles will never grow up.

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa-based writer and editor from Kentucky. Their latest book is But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, Anvil Press). They are a Senior Editor at Augur, Nonfiction Editor for untethered magazine, and a member of VII. You can catch their newest (and 7th solo) chapbook, Kneeling in Our Name (Gap Riot Press), in summer 2024.