by the bone

The right femur initially felt lighter than she expected when she had first hefted it from the drawer, but, now, about two-thirds up the cliff, C felt the weight of the fifth limb siding with gravity. She had been grateful how well the mortician cleaned the heavy muscle off the bone; Mel had made it a goal to grow her thighs into sinewy knots that she could show off back in town. The neighbors always eyeballed her thighs, and C enjoyed it as much as her girlfriend did. But now that very calcium phosphate and marrow were more than enough, C thought, as her left hand gripped into the pulpy earth, pulling herself up another few feet.

Finally she had reached the step of the canyon, named Grotto, for the small spring where the two had first made love. C sat, swigging from her water bottle, and looked first across the skyline: boring clouds hovering faintly over a far-off concrete hedge of buildings. She turned to the passage that led to the actual grotto. She would not return, but only let herself watch the tiny flecks of light flicker off the water tucked in stone.

Water no longer held romance for C. Her intention was that each of Mel's bones would be buried purely in the dirt, where moisture would not infringe on the intent. She would cover the earth in the parts of Mel that would out-exist both of them. She had not chosen this spot for the grotto nor the skyline nor the memory nor the fact it had already been four weeks since Mel's death and that a femur forms in the fourth fetal week. None of that had any meaning.

However, burying humans in graves just made them look like dinosaurs captured by asphalt pits, swallowed by tar. She waited for the sun to set by finishing her water and eating an expired can of artichoke hearts, before letting the stars guide her to her spot.

She had waited for this perfect time for the right femur, a spot where moon, mostly full, could light between a ring of pine trees. C and space had a complicated relationship, unlike hers and water. She resented the reach of space--despite her government's ever-stretching arm--like a child pining for candy on the counter. But, all the same, clear nights had always enveloped both her and Mel like warm, dry blankets, coated in the fabric of time.

Bones don't decay in space, C thought, while scooping untrimmed grass and small pebbles into a divot in the earth. She stood, stretching her back after a few minutes' work. A femur was much larger than a vertebra, the hole confirmed. So far, C had dug out spots for five vertebrae: in the ruins of their yard, about a football field's length from a beach, under a rusted playground swing set, an old laser tag arena, and the last place Mel tried to poison herself. There, C had set the serum beside the sacral vertebra. Ironically, the bottle had failed to retain the liquid, evaporated, and formed a rough crust around the lip.

C smoothed the ground with her hand the way one might soothe a newborn child. Soft, and unintentionally invasive, the dirt finally dripped away from her hand. With the femur, she buried no seed, no sprout, no plant. She left no type of headstone.

The skull was still a challenge, she thought, as she lay on her bed rolling her favorite rib between her fingers. This had been the debonair of the ribcage; its comma-shaped curve almost perfectly formed. A bass clef without accompanying dots. How bizarre, to have a favorite human rib. Only Mel’s bizarre wishes would allow someone like C to bury each bone like crops, selecting each like prime choice cuts for a barbecue restaurant. She set the rib on the nightstand beside her.

Now, with her eyes closed, C held the skull tightly between her palms, frontal bone against her forehead, trying to imagine the fear and serenity of being swallowed by water. Exiting the world through suffocation and water: a reverse birth. She was unsure which was more terrifying, for one brought on the other. Peering into the skull, she no longer saw Mel. Even her cheeks were lost without her flesh pulled over the jutting bones. C had experienced this when Mel's pulsing hand still had veins wrapped like vines around it, the days they were technically alive.

Summer had never been kind to either of them. C frequently passed out from dehydration and Mel often sank into her own cycle of depression. This C could understand. But the lackluster relief Mel would show when C would finally revive was like that one might feel after stepping on a spider and seeing a leg twitch. A mislead of death. Had it been hope? When Mel returned to herself, she would roll her legs on C and hang herself from her neck, laughing as though she were refueling. C fondled the case that held that very thought-tank of a skull before setting it back in its separate, velvet-lined box. Tomorrow would be another day.

And so she spent that day, and a few more of the next handful of weeks, planting the smaller, remaining bones like nationwide Easter eggs. It sounded like a holiday tradition the two of them would create, minus the human bones. At first C thought she might separate and bury each of the phalanges and carpals of Mel’s hands individually--many no larger than a pebble--but decided to group them at least by utility. Luckily for her, she strode by a city trying to repair wounded buildings and sidewalks with cement bandages. This is where she left Mel’s left ring finger, coiled like a worm.

The talk of marriage would surface and wash away like many of their disconnects and relationship tides. It had never really been necessary, but C liked the idea of solidifying her efforts with Mel. Some acknowledgement to their tribulations and commitment to their duty of taking care of one another. Ironically, she had brought Mel many shells from the shores near her childhood, set neatly on bronze in a size that fit her ring finger perfectly. Mel refused to wear much jewelry. Like many things, it weighed her down.

The last step to drowning, after panic and swallowing water, is the filling of the lungs. Air sacs converted to water balloons in an unconscious being. Many say the feeling of drowning is euphoric, a good way to go. C figured that depended on time. How long it took to drown. Or at least, how long it felt. And, perhaps, like a tub being emptied, what straggling thoughts remained before the brain quieted for a final time.

Another hike, another dig, another night home gently tapping the perfect rib against her nightstand. Had the lung tissue reached it, asking for itself to be punctured? She had left the other ribs underneath various neighbor’s gardens. Under vegetables, flowers, failing herbs. All that remained, beside the rib, was the skull.

Very often, a kiss refers to lips. Mel’s were since long dissolved or charred or cremated. Gone, both the kisses and the lips. C forgot what they’d felt like anyway. But once again the skull stared at her like a failed prototype or newly-manufactured doll head, whatever the difference might be. It was her final bone set to entomb in some portion of the planet.

As C found herself at the final spot--the one for the skull--Mel’s last words echoed in her head the way a dream fragment bounces more color than actual detail the morning after. They replay themselves, despite each syllable not being fully formed. It had been a simple, normal goodbye. Not a stilted peck, birthed from an awkward evening conversation, but a promise that one of those nights, it would eventually be better. Like picking at a wound and expecting to wake up without a scab or scar. Mel had said something about losing herself in the world, in work, and, soon, once again, in C.

As C climbed, each bristle of the pine needles felt sharper than the previous. The higher she got, the more they shrunk. The evergreen pine tree was taller than any Christmas tree she’d seen a picture of. But soon she steadied herself on a weak branch at least twenty-five feet up from the earth, the ground that held all of Mel’s bones in over a two hundred mile radius.

Holidays were nothing more than days with different names and different weather. Even when Christmas had long passed, Mel and C had found ways to celebrate arbitrary days: happy Seventh of March! with a roll of fresh mozzarella, or the wonderful Fourth of January!, the day they later learned Sputnik had fallen to Earth in 1958, by dressing up as gravity-laden maidens. There were ways to get through life, society, and the changing times and misconceptions. There were still ways to die.

C sat and drank more water from her bottle before letting out a long sigh. A sigh that felt longer and heavier than her lungs could ever contain, but a sigh nonetheless. The final bones. The final burial. Only it wasn’t a burial and it wasn’t the last bone. The perfect rib sat beside her bedside and always would, she decided. But the skull, was to be placed, not buried.

And with that, C pocketed her bottle, and scooped the skull from the largest pocket of her bag. With a huff, she stood, and wrapped an arm around the top of the large pine. As though in a show of both celebration and sacrifice, she took the skull--Mel’s skull--and skewered it onto the highest point of the tree. Through the right eye, the skull hung from the top the way people used to decorate trees with beautifully lit angels and stars in the hope of a rebirth, only without the January-chore of removal. 

originally published in the notre dame review