anti:freeze

Sometimes I picture Ashley in his grave; wonder whether his skin is still smooth, his eyes still blue or long since decayed. I wonder about his last moments, whether he knew the heroin was a lethal cut when he cooked it down, if he was alone when he tightened the leather belt around his bicep; plunged the needle into his vein. He had that kind of strength where the muscles are round but not hard, and because they weren’t developed by fistfights or weightlifting, but by skateboarding and play, they were soft. When I think of the needle puncturing his skin, I picture it piercing through layers – his baby fat, the emerging muscles of a man – heroin and quinine like magma in reverse, burning through his insides and creating new islands somewhere deep. I think I always knew we never had a chance, and maybe that was part of the attraction.

You can either use a spoon or cut the bottom off a soda can. What you’re looking for is a concave surface, something to dissolve the heroin in. Silver can tarnish, and when it does silver oxide contaminates your gear – a dirty hit – so avoid it if you can. If you get that in your blood, you won’t forget it. Your teeth will chatter like it’s eighty below zero, even as your insides burn, and you’ll throw up so hard you’ll swear your stomach was about to come up with the bile. Clean your spoon with an alcohol swab. Take the chunks out of their bag and smell them – make sure they smell right – a little like vinegar, with a little sweetness, too. After a while, you can tell different cuts by scent alone, just like flowers. It makes sense. Even after the cutting, the boiling down, the filtering, and the mixing with other chemicals and powders, heroin is still made from the poppy flower.

Place a chunk in the spoon, crush it, and add water, using the syringe to measure 50-75 units. Heat until it’s dissolved. Use the plunger from your syringe to mix it. Roll a cotton wad or use a piece of a tampon and stick it in the spoon. Then stick the syringe in the cotton and pull the plunger back slowly. This filters out particles you don’t want getting in your blood. Don’t hurry when you stick the needle in. It’s when the needle first pokes your skin that you feel the best. The anticipation is its own kind of peace – what’s inside that syringe will soon be inside you: potential energy on the verge of kinetic. You’re holding potential in your hand.

and if we existed as anything, it was as a kind of potential . . .

Sometimes we let our hands hover just barely above shoulders or clavicles or cheekbones, like air surveyors mapping mountains and caves, sending out signals that bounced back as radar in the darkness. Our fingertips flushed hot, the air between us magnetic and charged - potential energy on the verge of kinetic - but we resisted the attraction, refusing to touch so we could revel in longing a few moments more. We could have drawn intimate maps from those studies, but even still, I never saw his needle tracks.

Lately, I am attracted to honey. The image of honey poured from metal bowls擁nto spoons, onto the soil揺as been haunting me. I think of it like resin or lava, liquid that痴 capable of hardening into stone, preserving the remains of the most delicate insects, or surrounding a bubble of air and locking it forever in hard time. But unlike resin, which hardens forever into amber, or lava, which cools into a new layer of crust, honey can be cooked down again and again, heated up so the crystals melt into golden syrup. Time can be reversed, taken back to its potential, and the syrup can flow again in one viscous stream.

I think this is why I started putting honey jars where I find syringes and needles by the river. I carry a cloth with me, and when I find a needle and syringe, I pick it up carefully, with the cloth protecting my hands. I unscrew the jar lid and slide the syringe into the liquid. Suspended in sugary amber, the needle becomes a kind of fossil, sacred as a bone. The honey will harden into crystals; surround the syringe with opaque clouds, burying it inside time. All you have to do is cook it down, and everything becomes clear.

I love the way he leans so far back when he drives, how his right hand holds the steering wheel and his left hand hangs down below the side of his seat. He never grips the wheel tight or leans forward to check for cross traffic, and he doesn’t stop the car to roll a joint – he can do it with one hand. His whole body reflects a kind of fearlessness or fatalism, a condition to which I aspire but never achieve.

If I could cook down my memories, melt them into one fluid substance, distill them down to their essence, and mold them into one simple shape, I would. If I could make them as direct as an injection, as smooth as the most potent morphine, this story, and maybe my mourning, would be done.

I buy a small bucket of pollen from the beekeeper at Farmer’s Market, which I carry home in my palm like a grenade; terrified I might drop it. The bucket is clear plastic, with a thin lid and metal handle. It’s slightly overfilled, and as a result, the lid keeps popping open as I walk, so I kneel down and pour a little pollen into the grass. Against the green, the little balls of orange and red are bright as candy. I reach down and squeeze a few between my forefinger and thumb, rubbing them down to a fine powder. My eyes sting and water, and on my thumb, bumps are already forming – contact eczema, from my allergies. There’s something in this pollen that speaks to me. The poison, the sweetness, the danger in knowing what will happen if I open it. My allergies are intense, but I’m drawn to it anyway. Maybe because it’s so raw. It still has potential for sweetness as well as death.

why the metal bowls for the honey? why not ceramic - earth transformed into stone? metal because it melts. metal because it is elemental. the honey poured like gold. a kind of alchemy.

When there痴 a junkie in your past, there are questions. Did you ever watch him shoot up? Did your fingertips trace his needle tracks as your hand caressed his arm? Were there were scabs and sores where the needle pierced his skin? Was he was cruel when he was high? Could he still get it up? How you could have ever put up with it? People tell you it was good that you left him, that you did the right thing. Staying would have supported his habit. Waiting up late while he ran drugs would have driven you insane. You could have gotten arrested. What about AIDS? What about Hepatitis?

The more I answer these questions, the more my memories change. I close my eyes and feel Ashley痴 lips on my neck, the chill and tingle down my throat, the cold spots where his tongue left saliva behind, and in that saliva, bacteria or viruses swimming as the spit evaporates, a little trace of illness mixed with desire.

March 2000. I wake up from deep sleep, stricken with the feeling I’m being watched. It starts as a tingling on my scalp, lightness at the tips of my fingers, a sensation that spreads to my knuckles, and I tense my fists. My arms and legs feel paralyzed, all the muscles tense and ready to leap out of the bed, but unable to do it. A shadow moves over the floorboards, probably just a tree branch blowing outside, but I gasp anyway, as a cold current caresses my face – not exactly like air, a little heavier, like breath. Ever since someone sliced the screen from the window of my old apartment and tried to jump into my bedroom – a roll of duct tape in one hand and a knife in the other – I have been waking up in these panics. I’m never sure whether to trust my instincts or close my eyes again and fight the urge to check the door locks.

My fiancé lies next to me, sleeping deep, his curls spiraling over his cheeks. I pull a piece of hair away from his mouth and draw a blanket around my shoulders before climbing out of the futon to check the kitchen. It’s empty. The tiles are cold against my bare heels and toes, and the ticking of our old wind-up clock punctuates each step. I stand at the window for a minute, staring at the security lights of the church next door, waiting for someone to leap out of the bushes.

That’s when the chill creeps over my skin. The color blue rises into my consciousness, floating there, a balloon of color. The blue of cyanosis, my blue lips after a seizure. I twist the radiator dial and smell the old dust that flies off as it heats up.

Ashley is dead, I think.

And just like that, the air is light again. The room is warm, my fear is gone, and I realize I have been visited by a ghost. Ashley is dead. Why did he choose to tell me himself?

When I think about Ashley, I think about him buried beneath the snow, and none of the tracks leading up to him are mine. In my dreams I follow the tracks left before me, stepping into the footprints and wondering what it was like to really know him, to feel welcome here, to have the right to visit. I lie down and sink into the snow, wonder how far I have to dig to find him, how many layers must be scraped away before time changes direction. My breath caresses him across the ether, and there痴 a charge in the air. Static on the verge of spark.

Once, before we met, I saw Ashley in the hallway at high school, and I thought he was another half-brother, since so many kept appearing that year, the products of my dad’s failed marriages and affairs. He looked like a male version of me – same thin, muddy-blond hair, ends curling up on the shoulders, gray-blue eyes, baggy jeans and black Chuck Taylor All-Stars, laces worn down to the threads and duct tape across the toes to hold them together where the rubber tips were torn. His skateboard balanced against his left hip, wheels facing out, with a scratched-out and barely visible British flag decal on its underside. When he looked at me, I felt a charge through my whole center, heat shooting down my spine and into my legs. He must have felt the same way, because we both backed away, staring.

I tried to imagine his cheeks dusted with mortician’s make-up, his hands folded across his stomach, the way bodies are always laid out for the wake. If I had been there, I would have held my hand just above him, to see if the charge was still there. I would have kissed him on the mouth, and blown a little breath into the tiny spaces where the sutures weren’t stitched. Maybe I would have slipped a jar of honey in the casket, or sprinkled pollen on the grave after he was lowered into the hole. But I don’t know what he looked like at the end, whether his hair still curled up on his shoulders, if he still had a round belly and strong biceps. I don’t know if he had hepatitis or AIDS, if his skin was jaundiced, if he was covered in tracks or sores or if his eyes had lost their color. I don’t know if he was skinny from sickness. I can’t even remember whether his eyeteeth were crooked, those same teeth I licked a hundred times. I can’t remember the exact color of his hair and eyes – I could compare them to mine, but mine have changed with age. The only things I remember for sure are: his weight as he lay on top of me, lighter than he looked, warm and gentle, and the taste of his mouth, which was like tap water.

to the dead boy:

When I think about the larch, I think about its needles. I imagine them filling with resin, viscous gold syrup drawn up like honey into a syringe, where it crystallizes, as delicate and hard as Christmas brittle. And when each needle-leaf snaps loose from its branch, I remember how you pushed your needles in, testing to make sure you hit a vein by drawing a little blood into the syringe.

Today, I tasted honey that never crystallizes. I imagined it slicker, wetter, less sticky on tooth fillings and tongue, as I licked the thick glob on my spoon. This rare honey is made from the tupelo gum tree, which grows along the rivers of northwest Florida, and it is gold with a greenish cast, like a tornado sky or a tarnished ring. It is resin that never hardens into amber. Lava that never dries into hard crust and rocks. Timeless.

To produce honey without time, you must first build the bee colony's strength, making honey from other blossoms, such as Ti-Ti and Black Gum. You must strip every honeycomb clean, to prevent contamination, as even one drop of the wrong sugar will upset the delicate balance. And you must build high platforms for the bees, so they can fly above the swamps in search of the tupelos. All of this labor, just to keep honey from changing. To keep it as viscous and sweet as the first taste, the first lick from your finger, dipped deep into the jar, warped by rounded glass, suspended.

In the dream, I keep returning to Terminal 6 in the Rivergate Industrial District. I stand on the water's edge. I check my watch. No ship.

Later, I board a rusty, dark aircraft carrier. I understand it's a military vessel, although no one tells me the ship's name or destination. Ashley leads me through a narrow corridor, gripping my wrist tight. I can't see his face. Only the blue tips of his fingers, his yellow nails. "Would it matter," he says, "If I had died of AIDS instead of an overdose?"

I ask if he was sick when he died, if he knew the heroin was a lethal cut when he injected it. He pushes me into one of the cramped rooms and locks the door. I'm surrounded by sealed glass mason jars, with plastic identity cards suspended in golden jelly. Several of the cards have no photographs, only names. Some are missing the name, but have the photo. I wonder if one of them is mine.

Ashley unfolds a tattered paper and hands it to me. It's a hand-drawn map of Cedar Memorial Cemetery, with a red "x" drawn where his grave should be.

"Turn it over," he says.

On the back, he has written instructions for digging up his plot. According to the instructions, I should do this on the night of March 16th. The anniversary of his death.

When I wake up, I understand immediately that Ashley was never dead. He witnessed a drug crime, and for this, he was enrolled in the Witness Protection Program.

Then I wake up for real.

I am having the dream again, and this time, it doesn't end with the map.

"Remember the swans at Cedar Memorial?" Ashley says, rolling up his right sleeve, revealing his bicep and forearm.

I try not to look. I don't want to see his needle tracks.

I haven't thought about the swans in years. Some teenagers broke into Cedar Memorial cemetery late at night and killed them, cooking both birds on the bank of the artificial lake. It was sick. One of them was a politician's son. "You mean the ones that got killed?"

"Yeah." He holds out his arm. "You can look. It's okay."

I close my eyes tight and touch the thin skin of his wrist, tracing a vein to the inside of his elbow. The ridges and scars feel familiar, even though I never saw them when he was alive.

"What about the swans?" I ask.

He pulls his arm back, tugs down his sleeve.

I never get the answer I'm looking for.

to the dead boy:

Has it really been four years since you died? Do the years pass as quickly beneath the cold ground? Are your lips still stitched? Your teeth planted firmly in their gums? How long does embalming last?

In today's news: a missing woman pulled from the river, just a few blocks from my apartment.

Today, when I pour honey onto the soil for you, I will think of the missing woman, now found.

And I will remember Tammy Zywicki, whose birthday was March 13th. She would have been 33. (And who knows? Maybe if she were alive, our paths would have finally intersected. Perhaps she and I would be friends.)

And I will think of the victims in Spain, who stepped onto the trains with sleepy eyes, just like my friends every morning and evening of every weekday.

The ides of March are now behind us. Are we finally on the cusp of a peaceful spring?

I was trapped in a stairwell.

The building was old, with dark baseboards, cracked plaster walls, and heavy wooden doors. It was hot - at least ninety degrees - and the air stung my nose, left a taste on the back of my tongue. Crushed aspirin and rose petals. Or skin ointment - the kind you rub on mysterious rashes.

There were three stories, but only two exits - one at street level, wired with a fire alarm, and one on the second story, with a faint, golden two painted above a serious deadbolt. I jiggled the knob. Loose, rusty. The deadbolt was locked. I decided to hotwire the alarm.

I pulled pliers from my messenger bag and pried open the metal alarm box. Suddenly, someone grabbed my wrist, pulled my arm behind my back. A shock sizzled through my bones. Phalanges, metacarpals, lunate, ulna, radius, humerus, clavicle. Marrow hot as lava, liquid, unstable.

From behind, a whisper in my ear: The truth is, no one really understands electricity.

And then I woke up.

to the dead boy:

1.

I slide across the surface of the frozen lake, spinning on tip-toe, figure skating in tennis shoes and a patchwork skirt. You watch from the safety of a snow bank, laughing when I threaten to stomp on the ice, crack my way through to the water.

2.

You pour honey into the water, mixing it with a branch. "Did you know honey with water makes good antifreeze?"

I wish you would drink it instead.

another letter to the dead boy

In the mortuary:

When rigor mortis is present (present, as if rigor mortis were some kind of soul), the dead man's muscles must be massaged. The mortician applies cream to cold skin and rubs latex-covered fingertips into legs, head, and neck.

Some people wait their whole lives for touch this gentle, only to finally feel it after death.

Is there any charge when your nerves no longer fire? Any small twinge of pleasure at all?

from a dream:

I walk down to Terminal 6 again, a raincoat draped over my shoulders and a pollen-filled syringe in my right pocket. Storm clouds gather in the distance, rolling in fast, crashing like a tide. I look back over my shoulder, but the cityscape is all wrong: Portland has transformed into Cedar Rapids. Or vice versa.

Even though the weather feels like spring, the Willamette (or is it the Cedar River?) is frozen solid. I am waiting for an ice cutter ship to pick me up. Destination: unknown.

When it finally arrives, the ship crashes through the ice like a fist. The river shatters, and flecks of ice sting my cheeks and eyes. I look up, and I see Ashley on the deck. He extends his hand, but I cannot quite reach. The ship keeps moving. I throw the syringe, and Ashley catches it.