The Inevitability of Happiness

Today, there are no rubber ducks or mother's marigold skirts to hide behind as we once did. In their place, lurking dark and hoary, a bathtub mist updrafts thick with loose spores, and mildew veins sprawling behind caulked-over creases. The day, shrinking away heavy with time, as a body sagging into water. Even the washing suds have gone sour, worn out honeysuckle soap. Vibrant bubbles now collapsed flat against the opaque water, lying unseparated as waves and the days that cradle them. Nostalgia slips past. Quick as light, the window casements cast unsolicited optimism over everything. Good children peeking around our good mother, secured behind her skirt, saved-off snapshots of our good world, softly sucking butterscotch chips. Their melted brown sugar, sapid tastiness warm and oily-sweet. Crouching, we watched the new neighbor, smelled honeyed petals of scotch broom covered our mouths with both hands, rolled our shoulders with laughter. It was fun. Old neighbor finally stopped coming. He was not good, over-steeped as dandelion tea. Benign-sounding thing, bitter and dry, sometimes salty. Not fun. As gray as this day, as this water, when I knew him, he knew me. Sinking deeper into the whirling, swirling waves, thinking wheaten memories: Our mother, faint taste of molasses, canary-colored ducks, cheap fowls in the bathwater. Splashing them about, their faces stiff, fixed, hard-casted grins of plastic, permanent as a picture. We knew joy. As faded as grace, memory does not play favorites. Day begins to circle the drain, as everything in time must also do. All of it sluicing together infused with the reunion of disparate things, heady and nectarous the potion of honey-sucklings and leftover rinsings. Remembering is a concoction of homogeny, cheek by jowl, wild whorls of manufacturing our own misery. In this still moment, my wretchedness is wrested by the merciful inevitability of happiness and the rude transiency of grief. Was it as bad as good? This day, that man, the ducks, you, mother, sweets in our pockets, dreary hues fused with jocosity of color. Tired water continues its goodbye, leaving me chilled with goosed skin, evidence of its wake. I drape my cold frame, hanging my body over the wettened lip of the tub. I give loud, guttural guffaws at it all now, those plastic yellow birds poor substitutes and terrible life-preservers. I learned soon enough to be my own safety. Today, there are no rubber ducks or mother's marigold skirts to hide behind as we once did.