In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

every way the world tries to kill us, it gives us a way to survive. You just gotta find it.”

I inhale deeply. It feels gluttonous to do that around Papaw.

I don’t know how to say goodbye to either of you. I recite it in my mind like a prayer to any God who ever cared enough to listen to me—a petition not for something I want, but to know what I want.

It begins sprinkling, the muted notes sounding like someone trying to slowly and secretly open a plastic bag in a room full of sleeping people. The air grows dense with the shimmering perfume of rain, dewy honeysuckle, and mown grass.

I guess uncertainty isn’t always something you can conquer. Sometimes it’s a path you have to take.

I’ve seen that life is filled with unimaginable horror. But it’s also threaded through with unimaginable wonder.

This must be what it’s like to die. You look around you and see how much of what you love you leave behind.

I hear in my mind the swish of the boat cutting through the water, a whisper of a thing that returns to perfection the moment we leave it. I like knowing there are bodies whose scars heal completely right in front of you.

Memory is a tether. Sometimes you get some slack in the line and you can play it out for a while. You forget and think you’re free. But you’ll always get to the end and realize it’s still there, binding you, reminding you of itself, reminding you that you belong to each other.

“Did you know you can’t fold a piece of paper in half more than eight times?” Delaney says. “You serious? That can’t be right. What about a super thin piece of paper that’s, like, a mile wide.” “Nope. And if there were a way to fold a piece of paper in half one hundred and three times, it would be as big as the universe.” “Is that true?” “Yep. Exponential growth.”

I think on the wonder of things expanding to fill the universe, even as they’re being folded in half.

as though his being born into wealth isn’t its own sort of luck-based full-ride scholarship to life.

Life often won’t freely give you moments of joy. Sometimes you have to wrench them away and cup them in your hands, to protect them from the wind and rain. Art is a pair of cupped hands. Poetry is a pair of cupped hands.”

“Every hurt, every sorrow, every scar has brought you here. Poetry lets us turn pain into fire by which to warm ourselves. Go build a fire.”

She’s a brilliant poet. Her lines are sinewy and muscular. They land with the heat and energy of lightning strikes. Listening to her read feels like standing in a river—any moment you could be swept away. A few times I hold my breath until I am almost gasping, for fear of missing even a single word.

We think of language as this tame thing that lives in neat garden beds, bound by rules and fences. Then someone shows it to you growing wild and beautiful, flowering vines consuming cities, erasing pavement and lines. Breaking through any fence that would try to contain it. Reclaiming. Reshaping. Reforming. In my life, I’ve never known anything else that felt so full of infinite possibility. Words make me feel strong. They make me feel powerful and alive. They make me feel like I can open doors.

It’s a real shitty deal that you get to grow up only once and your parents are your parents and you get one shot at it.

If only heartbreak were truly what it claims to be, it might not be so bad. But here’s the thing—your heart never gets broken quite enough to stop wanting who broke it.

I want someone who knows me like she does—all the ways I’m weak and strong—and still loves me in spite of and also because of it. That would be great.

It feels like he’s bequeathing me an inheritance of the only wealth he possesses—his memories, his quiet joys.

I don’t know how to live under the sun of a God whose harvest is everyone I love.

Each time we think we’ve collected ourselves, we slip again, as if trying to scale a steep and icy slope.

Papaw’s existence was quiet and small, but it was a life defined by the love he gave and got. It was the life he wanted.

Some people can lift your heart up to the light, reading the truth of you written on it. I was afraid that being a man meant waging war on what’s beautiful.

Not one expresses the completeness of the idea it represents, the way apple represents the completeness of an apple and river represents the completeness of a river. They all leave something unsaid. They all have some phantom limb that reminds you of their lack.

I hold every memory of him like a match I let burn down to the end, singeing my fingers until it hurts too much to hold.

There are secret fires you wall off because you fear what they’ll burn if you loose them. Because you choose caution over possibility. But at the first crack in the wall, you feel their warmth and decide you’ll gladly risk the burning.

I think about how much I wish the trajectory of the world was toward flowering instead of ruin.

You are not a creature of grief. You are not a congregation of wounds. You are not the sum of your losses. Your skin is not your scars. Your life is yours, and it can be new and wondrous. Remember that.”