This Is the Journey by Alison Malee

Author:Alison Malee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 2019-03-12T02:21:31+00:00

anything more than

i am a shipwreck.

i am a wreck. i am a ship.

i have jumped.

with both feet.

i have been thrown

overboard.

i have been

flagged

down.

i have called

the depth

of the water

my home

when it wasn’t

anything more

than darkness.

much love

it is nearly September when johnny writes me that first letter, folded into a crisp, clean, prison-supplied envelope. it shows up in my mailbox unannounced and expected, a stray that slips in and out of neighborhoods until it finds somewhere that fits.

hi, ali.

on a map, this is our starting point. point A. it pirouettes between us like a heartbeat, an under the floorboards thumping. how could i read it without thinking of my childhood, the pulsing that lives within me, the thread that ties me to the intricacy of family.

it is a curse that i am so unprepared for something as seemingly small and momentous as this. this, a butterfly on a hillside; a tipping point.

the words are puffed chest and boastful.

you should’ve seen me, he says, his penmanship the worn edge of fraying denim. i could really play. football, basketball, you name it.

i imagine a peacock fluffing its feathers, his head pecking and pecking at the wind.

our grandmother would love you.

grandmother, wrinkled and shining. i imagine her as a sharp-eyed eagle, wrapping her feathered wings around the weight of an entire family.

i’m writing a book. it is sort of like yours but different.

he writes this with his human hands, and his human heart. so i imagine him as he must look to the rest of the world, an adult, a man, an inmate, spread out on a concrete floor in a place i have never been. his legs crossed at the ankle, notebook paper just like this strewn around him in waves.

we’re family.

once, my best friend got bitten by a stray cat we found behind my house. we were beside ourselves with laughter, until her parents told her it was not, in fact, humorous and dragged her to the doctor’s office for a rabies shot. we were so small, all we could do was tease her. a cat had bitten her, sunk its teeth into her naive wrist, as she nervously passed it a bowl of whole milk. what an angry, ungrateful beast, we thought, our shoulders bouncing. what bad timing.

isn’t it tragic, i want to whisper, that when i think of us, i think of that defenseless cat, his lips pushed up and snarling. isn’t it sad, that this is what we share: two parents, and an ability to defend.

isn’t it wild, i want to yell, that in some ways i have always been a stray. always been the one biting the hand. isn’t it crazy that you always have been, too.

johnny promises he won’t make the same mistakes again. he has always had the worst timing, he says, always been in the wrong place.

i want to make him swear an oath, cross his heart, cut his palm, spill the vow over anyone he has loved. but johnny, i want to say. haven’t you ever wondered what part of our DNA makes us so reckless?

but instead i do not say any of those things.

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