On the Savage Side

by Tiffany McDaniel

Chillicothe, Ohio, it turned out, was full of mortals.

There would be old Tecumseh brochures,

“You can’t give up because things get a little hard, or you’ll never get through.

“Biggest asshole in the state of Ohio.”

We’re men, their walk seemed to say. We’re men and we fuck.

The future I had seen for her was as a great swimmer.

Walking the pool was a woman who had the broad shoulders of someone who had been familiar with chlorine most of her life.

I told her it was gonna burn. She said that was okay. That she wanted the kitchen to smell like her mom’s.”

I mean our whole lives, we get ready, Arc. We do our hair, we get dressed up. For what? To live a hundred devastating years? No, thank you.”

And even when I’m in a room full of people, I am always astonished at how lonely I can be, because the one person I need isn’t there.

I keep thinking about what it was I did that made her turn to this life. Then I think, maybe it was something I didn’t do. Maybe I didn’t love her enough or say the right words, or I wasn’t quiet when I should have been or loud when I needed to be.

Sometimes I give a second thought for the young woman I used to be until I fall to my knees. Every time I am astonished at how lonely I can be. Because it is so very lonely being a coward.

Maybe then, on the old land once called Chala-ka-tha, we will have left the most amazing artifacts of ourselves behind.