Nov. 5, 2023
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ASHES
By Rel Feannag
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ASHES
By Rel Feannag
In this one, I think we’re playing cards.
Maybe arguing about movies or pulling from dress up bins
From our favorite worlds we loved to build,
to our favorite stories we loved to perform.
I can picture your hands typing, his gap-toothed smile, and the energy
of fellow children, eager to please.
Perhaps here we’ll slide down the stairs on mattresses
watch movies late into the night
climb trees over a crackling fire
or sit on the iron chairs and talk for hours.
But the structure remains the same. I cannot create
in my dreaming mind
anything I do not did not know.
So here is what it looks like, this frozen shard of time,
this shifting maze I dream in:
Warm brown walls, cold brown floor.
It’s always their house. because
the scene of the real crime is too difficult to bear.
A wooden deck, with a trellis where stringing lights and stringing plants hang. We’ll eat pasta and I’ll try pesto and realize
I don’t like it that much, and for the first time, that’s okay.
It’s lovely in the warmer months, although the bugs do love to bite you.
The heavy metal chairs scraping across the wooden beams
over the overlapping avenues of conversation.
An unpleasant sound, but there’s always laughter to distract.
The dark, scratched-up wooden chairs in the kitchen are brown. So is the table.
Copper decorative pots sit on shelving across the walls.
I eat take-out that first night, sitting on beat up furniture I’d
blown out birthday candles on.
I wish I remembered what my fortune cookie said.
It was the first time I’d had food in over a day.
I can’t remember the color of the couch where I tore up my arms in a panic attack triggered by god knows what.
Where I fell asleep afterwards with the cat cuddling me.
I don’t remember if there was a carpet over the dark wooden flooring where I lay down,
manic and dissociative simultaneously.
We would move the couch, though, to watch shows together at the desktop computer. So maybe there
wasn’t a carpet. Isn’t. (My tenses are as tense as I am, constantly fighting to remember - )"
"The stairs were carpet, that’s for sure. Beige and kind of ugly, stained with life,
god-knows-what after years of us
waging wars and spilling food before we learned of blood,
the way children do.
In contrast, a dark, almost black leather couch waits upstairs, where my immune system gives up nearly sixteen years of war in
one fell swoop,
and I will fall asleep many nights propped up, the acid reflux burning a hole
in my esophagus, my stomach, from the flaying, peeling stress.
Sometimes it gets mixed up with older versions, ancient timelines
At one point, in that same room, desks lined the walls where
I once hid and won a game of hide-and-seek,
where we played video games of building homes with pets.
But I also remember the place before, with the upstairs where
we tried to film our games and stories and first steps.
There was a tire swing outside, and a tree house where
we’d once camped out and spent the night.
every room, a lived-in place, a house in every sense of the word touched by years of joy
As in an instant, the warm browns are set alight with a match, and the wood turned to ash,
and my comfort turns to fear.
last we spoke, a hazy image shifting constantly, under the trellis and string lights
now in an expansive snow-globe trap of my unrelenting screaming reminiscence,
I lean forward and whisper in your ear
a secret message I dare to give. begging you to pick up.
perhaps in all these years you’ve developed telepathy.
so far, it’s only continued silence. so,
perhaps this time I’ll get a little longer before the terror settles in.
perhaps you’ll drag me up the stairs once more, and we’ll
have serious conversations over coffee I don’t like
talking about things neither of us care about for the sake of the other, because isn’t that what love is?
perhaps we’ll tease and torment and annoy the shit out of each other
in a home I borrowed from you,
just one more time,
before I remember.
Rel Feannag
Rel Feannag (he/him) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled writer who survived a rural childhood of religious cults and institutional violence. He focuses on building narratives across mediums to explore how stories communicate with and through each other. His work explores PTSD, disability/bodily autonomy, abuse, and the survival power of rage in art. He writes in spite and with hope. Follow him on IG: @relfeannag
Image Description: A white person with black-framed glasses wears a black N95 mask over a white surgical mask. He has dark brown hair that falls below his ears, a pair of black headphones around his neck, a black thread necklace, and a light grey ombré sweater on. In the background is a blue sky, green trees, and a metal fence. His eyes are crinkled, indicating that he is smiling under the mask.