City in a Canoe

I remember floating, the current carrying us in the city confined by canoe.

I remember believing that the earth was comprised of canoe and nothing more.

I still dream of white facades. I dream of thirteen church steeples and of twelve bells echoing at noon. When I dream of the city canoe, I dream of empty evenings soaked in yellow lamp lights. I dream peacefully, hidden in the memories of yesterday.

But, sometimes, I dream that I am running through the heart of the city. I am in the center. I feel my pulse, throbbing, aching. I feel fear. The ground disappears. I am submerged, falling into the river.

Underwater, I am dying.

I wake up, wet with sweat, but I am convinced that I have drowned.

I have died a thousand times in my dreams.

Here, on the banks of the river, I am still drowning.

I want to call out to you in the canoe. But my voice will crash, then collapse against the walls of our city. The sound will not find you in the labyrinth of streets. I try to imagine your location. I want to believe that you are home, in the place we built together. I want to believe that you are drinking tea at the kitchen table, staring out the window – watching the world reel by like a moving picture. I want to reel you in, like a fish tight on the line. I want to catch you. I want to capture you in the moment.

I close my eyes and I see it. I can’t tell if it is a real memory or if I have created it in my mind.

But there you are.

Drinking tea. I make a sound, in whatever this is, and you look up at me and smile.

I decide that it doesn’t matter if it is true or not. I believe that this is a memory. And so it is.

So, I remember that smile and I hold on to it. Even as the canoe travels far away. Even as you go away.

In my mind, I travel the city. I walk down roads roamed long ago. In my imagination, I construct you as a child, the time in which my memory is soaked with sentimentality. Together, we go off exploring our canoe city. We walk past the church and school. In my mind, we are now passing the hospital. The cemetery. I tug your hand. I cannot stay.

“Run,” I say in my brain, but the words cannot be said to you because you are not here.

You are there, in the canoe city. I am here on the ground, watching you drift further away.

I think again of our city and I think of the playground. I want to place you there. You might be hiding in a tunnel. You might be waiting for me, like when we played hide and seek. You were terrible at hiding. I was an excellent seeker. Sometimes, I counted to ten in my head before finding you, just so you had a chance to think of yourself as a hidden thing.

I begin counting, but I do not finish. I stop at three because I know that I do not want to reach ten.

I know where you are.

You were always terrible at hiding.

I know I can find you, but I don’t want to. So, I walk away.

Instead, I think of the architecture of boats. I think about how the wood is bent to create the canoe, how the water bends around wood. How solid separates the liquid beneath. How the hull, even when full of vertical structures and avenues, can glide across the surface. The city canoe is the physics of perfection. I could not create something so perfect. I cannot even try.

I think about water bending around bodies. I think that if I went into the water, it would absorb me. It would dissolve me. In the water, I would become the water. I would disappear. I am afraid. You know this. You know I am afraid of drowning.

You always told me I was safe in the canoe city as long as I was with you. But now we are gone. I am not on the canoe with you. We are no longer together in our city.

I wonder if it is still our city if one of us is absent.

Can it be our city if one of us is removed from it? Can it be our city if one of us is buried by it?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Help me.

I am being crushed by the city I no longer inhabit.

A city is a heavy burden to carry.

I wish I did not carry it alone. I wish that someone else on this far away land came from the canoe city. I want to have a city in common with someone.

I wish it were you.

I am following the canoe along the river bank, but it is almost out of sight. The current must be strong. It is carrying the canoe so fast. I don’t know if I have strength to follow.

My legs are weak.

I come temptingly close, but you are out of reach. I move my arm, the fingertips sweeping the sky, stretching beyond the atmosphere, reaching for ether. I see specks of other worlds in the dancing and dying light of evening. I see great cities built and destroyed in between breathes. My heart beats and entire civilizations exist outside of the confines of time.

I see all of this, and none of you. I know that you are gone. You have moved beyond me.

I still want to touch you though.

If I cannot follow, I must go forward. I walk along the banks of the river and I wonder what happens when the land stops. I wonder if I will be able to continue or if I will fall off of the earth. I wonder where I will fall.

You never wondered about such things. You believed in something. You held my hand and told me to believe too. The only thing I ever believed in was you. You and the canoe.

I believed that the canoe was the earth. Until my world ended.

Then I had to go. I had to go because, without you, I was drowning.

I wasn’t dreaming. It was real. I was drowning.

I was afraid of drowning. That’s why I left.

I was afraid of leaks. I was afraid of floods.

I was afraid of the water.

I imagined lungs filled with liquid. I imagined the weight of water.

But I am no longer afraid.

I am ready.

Sink or swim, I am coming.

I am coming.

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Kellene O’Hara is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at The New School. Her fiction is forthcoming in The Fourth River and Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine.