The Brooklyn Rail

A bright windowsill:

The sun beats down 
Through the triple-pane
Onto a caked surface, where
White paint grows soft
And chips 
All year.

On the other side, 
Outside,
It is bitter cold. 
Almost zero, if not 
Below. Temperatures
That turn air into something sharp, 
And cheeks into something red.

It is the kind of bright winter day,
One of those blinding ones 
Where you put sunglasses on just to fetch the paper and the coffee.
At the same time, 
The overnight snow fades fast
Too fast, with
Each passing car and foot, 
Soot, tread, dirt, piss, shit, time, heat,
Its white turns grey or worse, 
Its brightness loses to the sun.

A bug basks in the sunlight, 
A cicada.

Who knows how
It got here,
How it has lived so long into the winter, its life. 
It rests in the light.

SOPHIE
Well, at least he was present.

BO
Right, yeah.

SOPHIE
Like
Around.

BO
He was.

SOPHIE
My dad wasn’t like that, he
I don’t think he could find my house on a map.
I don’t think he knew what I did for work,
Or like
The name of my cat.

BO
Mister Gorbachev?

SOPHIE & BO
“Tear down this wall!”

BO
No, yeah,
It’s not that I wish he knew me better or
That he was more perfect
Or more better, but
Now…

SOPHIE
My cat?

BO
My dad.

SOPHIE
Oh. Sorry.

BO
No–

SOPHIE
Why did I…?

BO
It’s fine.

SOPHIE
I miss him.

BO
I miss him too.
…
Your cat.
…
And—

SOPHIE
Yeah.

BO
I don’t want to.

SOPHIE
You can’t help that.

BO
I know, but–

SOPHIE
No.
No,
You can’t help that.

The day moves on.

They work from home.

They over-steep their tea.

They wrap the string of their tea bags around the handle 
Of their mugs. 
They use them twice
They discard their saucers
Rings form on their desks.

From their computers, they engage users 
Through dynamic collaboration
And in-depth, detail-oriented analysis 
Applied to their areas of expertise
And knowledge-based skillsets.

They add value and wait for their days to be over, 
They wait so long 
They let their tea over-steep,
But with the amount of milk that they add,
They hardly notice
Or care.

Outside, 
Cats wait for them to put out food.

TOM
Anything yet?

TABBY
No.

TIGER
It’s still the daytime
The early daytime.

TABBY
Maybe they won’t
Maybe yesterday was the last time
No more handouts.

TIGER
Don’t say that.

TABBY
Who knows?

TIGER
Don’t say that!

TOM
You haven’t seen him?

TABBY
No.
He’s gone.
He hates us.

TOM
Mr. Gorbachev.

TOM & TIGER & TABBY
“Tear down this wall!”

TIGER
It’s been a while.
Maybe he’s moved.
He always talked about it.

TABBY
Where would he move?

TIGER
I don’t know.
Sunset Park?

TABBY
Far from his parents.
From here.

TIGER
That’s what I’m saying…

TOM
It’s the same people
In there.

TABBY
Exactly.
And if they’re still here, and he’s not,
Maybe–

TIGER
Don’t say that,
Don’t say that.
Please,
I don’t want you to say that.

A snowflake falls on Tiger’s face, 
He paws it off.

The three of them sit, 
Haunch to haunch, 
And look up at the window. 
They are quiet for some time,
Together,
Remembering their friend.

TOM
One time,
Do you guys remember when he caught that roach?
I–
Were you here then, Stripes?

TIGER
Yeah.

TOM
It was so funny.
Remember?

TIGER
Yeah.

TOM
Because,
He saved it.
He must have caught it like
In the morning
When the sun comes from this side
When the bug would be on the windowsill or
Warming up, resting
And he kept it until we got here because it was like
He wanted to show it to us.
And he didn’t just want to show it to us
Like, “Look what I found, guys.”
He wanted to dismantle it in front of us.

TIGER
Member.

TOM
Right, thanks.
Dismember it in front of us.

He brought it up to the window
And set it down and it almost got away again but he slapped out a paw
And trapped it.
Then slowly,
Slowly,
He used just his front teeth
Those white small ones
And popped off one of its legs.
We were like
“What??”
And he just grinned,
And popped off another one,
And then the next
And the poor thing was trying to fly away but knew it was a goner and he
The wings
One, then the other.
Its eyes.
The whole thing was like
Guts all over the place
Veterinary 
And we were all just out here
Jaws on the floor
Drooling
No bug tastes… great?
But no bug has ever, ever looked so delicious.

And then he just turned and walked away.
Do you remember that?
Like nothing happened.
Let us watch that whole thing,
Let us sit there for 20 minutes while he
And then just sauntered off
Back out into the other room where there are no windows
With the bright light sometimes and darkness others
He just
Without a second look
Hopped off the sill, and... yeah.
He left.

It was
So
Cool.

TIGER
So cool.

Tabby’s head is bowed low.

Tom stands up,
And walks a lap around Tabby. 
Tom puts his forehead against Tabby’s.

There is a long moment when they are close together. 

The window opens.

Sophie puts a fresh tin of food outside her and Bo’s window.

Tiger hops up to it, 
Then Tom, 
And finally, Tabby.

Mouths full, between bites:

TABBY
You know
I don’t
Think that
It was a cockroach.

TOM
What?

TABBY
In the story.

TOM
Oh.

TIGER
Wasn’t it?

TABBY
No.

TOM

Right…

TIGER
Too small.

TABBY
Too small to be a cockroach.
And come on,
Gorb would never live with people who tolerated roaches.

Each cat,
Between bites,
Turns its head to look into the apartment. 
Which is, in fact, 
Incredibly clean.

They have to give it to Tabby. 

TOM 
You’re right.

TIGER
You’re right.

TABBY (mouth full)
Mmmhrrgm.

The cats eat their fill. 

It's nighttime,

Sophie and Bo lay out
On the couch
Under a pile of blankets,
A pile unto themselves
Buried with the bad news of the world.
Phones to noses,
An absent-minded hand on the other’s leg,
They are together through this.
There is nothing to say.
What to say?

SOPHIE
What about Michigan?

BO
I couldn’t live there.

SOPHIE
Not the U.P.?

BO
What would I eat?
Are there vegan options?

SOPHIE
We’d forage.
I have to take you to Pictured Rocks.

BO
I don’t want to move.

SOPHIE
I know.

BO
No, I don’t want to move from this couch.

SOPHIE
Oh, Bo.

BO
I just
I always look forward to seeing him again
Do you know what I mean, like
When there’s an Eagles game
Something that we would do together, watch together?

SOPHIE
Yeah.

BO
God knows what the Olympics will be like
USA-Canada
That was always…

SOPHIE
We could go to
Like
Maybe we could go to a bar and watch?

BO
No…
No.
Thanks, but
No.

SOPHIE
Alright.

One last thing before bed:

SOPHIE
Hey–

BO
Yeah?

SOPHIE
Do you think they miss him?

BO
My–?

SOPHIE
The cats.

BO
Which ones?

SOPHIE
The outdoor cats.
They come and
I’d catch them staring at each other
I think it drove him sort of crazy.

BO
Mr. Gorbachev.

SOPHIE
Yeah, he got the name because
The window, the wall…
He was so desperate to get out
Is how it looked, and
I don’t know.
I hope he was happy here.
I really, really hope he was happy here.

BO
“Tear down this wall!”

SOPHIE
Ha.

BO
He was.

Hey–
He was.

On the windowsill, 
The cicada is gone,
And so is the sunlight. 
It’s cold now
Just like the rest of the house
The rest of the outdoors, this world.

The winter feels like winter.

Still, it left something behind, 
An exoskeleton, 
A shell of the thing, 
An empty space
The little void, 
The bug’s shadow
Its body rendered in translucent detail,
A trace of its continued existence.

This is what we leave behind:
Traces, impressions, memories.

We are not the volcano.
We are not Vesuvius. 
The ash raining down from the sky is not ours, 
We are buried in it. 
There is time, 
We have enough to lay down, 
To gather together and let it fall, 
To create voids of our own,
Impress ourselves in the layers of soot.

Our bodies leave behind space.
They rot away
Into dust.

When the archeologist finds us in the ground, 
When they cast of us, 
Our hollow form,
They will fill us with their stories of our time, 
They will sing our names, 
And call us something impossible like “Braden” 
Because that will be what we are to them.

When they find us with our foreheads together
And our heads full of fossilized wings 
Let them say we survived until we didn’t. 
Let them sing our winter songs. 
Let them replicate our tea. 
Let them celebrate the volcano,
Or whatever disaster 
Bridges our time and theirs, 
And brought us together, 
In the end.