The Ouija board sits like a limp, swollen still-born calf on the midnight dew in the graveyard grass. The planchette in my hand like a forbidden fruit while my back rests on a nameless tombstone.
I don’t want to end up having simply visited this world[i]
I don’t even know if he will speak. Do the infants of the dead even have a language? I have been conjuring the dead one way or another all my life. I have my grandfather’s laugh and his sense of personhood. I have my grandmother’s compassionate eyes via my mother’s worried glance. I borrow and steal the words of my former peers in art. Life is such a conundrum and beyond it even more mystery.
I begin. I ask the thinly veiled air the name of my brother, who was never given one. The planchette rests barely underneath my fingers. I am soaking from the damp grass and the darkness begins to change heavily.
The planchette sits still like a barely breathing fish on dry land.
Listen – are you breathing just a little and calling it life?
I ask a different question. What would my brother’s name be if he could choose it?
The planchette moves forward. A-d-a-m. My heart leaps in my chest like a Lazarus in the depth of a cave.
Do you have any advice for me, now, when my mother and father are a razor away from cutting the thread of my connection to them?
L-o-v-e b-u-t w-i-s-e-r.
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it
I ask the air between us, I imagining that his infant body is curled in fetal position in front of me, if the world is truly just a stepping stone through one darkness to another.
No b-u-t Yes
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world
I ask him if I am a good brother, if I am not just trudging through this life gracelessly and adding weight to the shoulders of those I love.
No: b-e k-i-n-d t-o y-o-u.
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
I ask the wind for comfort. I ask the night to envelope me. I ask whatever god is listening to revitalize my battered heart.
You do not have to be good
I ponder one last question. I ask it in earnest but with caution. Is it comfortable, whatever it is you consider home now?
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable
Yes: I h-a-v-e w-o-r-k s-t-i-l-l t-o d-o.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work
Goodbye Adam, I say.
B-y-e.
An owl swoops down over the graveyard. I pick up the Ouija board and planchette. I turn to leave and find the owl on the grave directly in front of me. It eyes me with the wide depth of its eyes before it hoots and flees. In that moment, I feel blessed. I feel alive. I feel certain.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness
[i] All italicized text are quotes by Mary Oliver from a various assortment of her extensive body of work
Samuel J Fox is a bisexual essayist and poet living in rural North Carolina. He is currently poetry editor for Bending Genres LLC. He is the recipient of the Gilbert-Chappell Award for Poetry (2013) and was a runner up for the Ron Rash Award in Poetry. He is located in Statesville, NC. He tweets (@samueljfox)