State of Paradise

by Laura van den Berg

How did we wind up here, shipwrecked at my mother’s house? In Florida, this is a question I ask myself every day.

So far this year has felt like living under a giant blanket, out of view of the wider world, but underneath that blanket exists a whole universe of memory and association and experience. I am never alone. Under the blanket I have, to my absolute horror, all my former selves for company.

Sobbing so hard she’s doubled over, her shoulders quaking. When she reaches the field, she sinks onto the ground. She sits with her legs crossed and her face in her hands, still sobbing.

What part of the story are we in right now? Are we in the middle, or are we still at the beginning? Is the end closer than we think?

It always amazes me when people ask what happened? as though the question is a simple one.

You have been tasked with saving our lives, I wanted to say to the counselors, and this is the best you can come up with?

Sometimes I imagine different versions of myself in all the different places I have ever lived, inching through time in parallel.

“Enough of this,” I tell her. I pound my fists against my thighs. She hops into the car and slides the headset on.

To write is to attempt to bridge the gaps that cannot ever be closed.

But who are we kidding? We can’t leave the people we love to go under with the ship. We have to keep helping them bail out water. Also, who is to say that the place we left, the place that we remember together in bed, still exists as it once did? To return might well be a journey that we can now only undertake in our imaginations.