August, Again.
A month of recurring nightmares.
If an existential void is a month, it is August.
I notice I am holding my breath. I don’t understand why I feel so jammed up, until I realize that all the Augusts are converging on me at once. I am having a hard time separating current events from memory.
Some of these memories are playing out again in real time. I am disoriented.
One moment it’s early August of 2009. A friend I’ve worked with dies. He leaves his affairs in complete disarray. I wind up making the arrangements for his body.
The process goes on for almost two weeks. I keep asking myself how it is possible that I am doing something so intimate for someone I don’t know that well. The loneliness of his situation floors me.
On the day he is cremated, I put on my black Betsey Johnson dress with the embroidered flowers. I want to doll myself up for him. I slip on hot pink heels. I pick a posy of flowers from my back yard; Rose of Sharon is in bloom.
I go to the funeral home and sit alone with his body. He isn’t religious, so I read him some Shakespeare. I choose a passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
We know each other from smoke breaks taken during the rehearsals of plays. I am an actor. He does the lights. As I start to…
