By Hannah Ziebarth
Featured in Caesura: 2020 Imago
Unspokens
You decorate our boss’s office with a roll of toilet paper. I join in, but give you the odd bolt out. You tell me about your other practical jokes and I wonder if I’ve played one on myself.
There was another girl once who had her parents’ permission, two dresses, and you. It ended with her. I thought it had with me until I saw your 70’s cop show hair.
Judas, one month without you and I’m all throat blushes and shy glances hidden by my boss’s door. Your smile is too much. Mine is too little.
Years ago, your rolled down window was a candle, as the wind bit my hands and lips, as I was choked by the voice hanging up at the end of the line.
We share the conference room, you sit kitty-corner to me. You hate staying still and apologize after you talk to break your concentration.
You never have to try to get me to smile. But, I get you to laugh. I say how Jesus is actually spelled with a G and yes, you laugh.
You coax a dance with me and I unzip your ugly bear suit before we dance like car dealership inflatables. I pretend it means something more than it does.
We spend the day on blacktop building picture frames. We stain, we cut. I still have the t-shirt blotched with wood dye, the buzz of the saw in my ears, the Chaco tan on my feet.
Sitting in the front row, I can hear you sing, and your leg rests next to mine. Next Sunday, you sit three rows back. Alone.
I fall asleep on the couch to the movie we watch. Later, the credits and I listen to your stories of hiding flashlights for reading under bed covers. My heart evaporates like froth off a river.
We eat ice cream, sometimes twice a day. I never get how you can soak yours with bananas or peaches. I only understand hot caramel.
We drive to the escape room in your red Mazda. Two couples. And you with an Oxford comma between me. Neither of us are good at this, but we’re great at eating Chinese.
I lie and say what is and will be is enough. Has been enough. I try to cut myself off, but like always, I only hurt my hands.
Showered in the projector light, we work in a planetarium against basement blackness. Steady with the lines, the tape, the box cutter. The blade nicks your thumb. It hurts, doesn’t bleed.
You cover my brother’s eyes when Spiderman and MJ kiss. I want you to turn. Look at me. Cover my eyes as mine cover yours.
We still talk, smile, and wave. I want what’s beyond your ignorance. I try to write an
explanation, to you, to myself, but I can’t translate the language.
The time comes for evisceration. My voice dials up in decibel, so you hear what I have tried to say without words.
Two days before. There’s a girl who’s not me, and you who are definitely you. I wonder if history could stop rhyming. I don’t like this kind of poetry.
Judas, the wind bites, the blade cuts. I hurt but can’t bleed. I can only sit and write down all these unspokens still inside of me.
My favorite is when we paint. You miscount the color green. You talk about music and what makes it good. You call me a friend. And how can I ask more than that?
Bonus work:
The Canon
“Golden hour, isn’t that a thing?” Alice asked. The sun set quickly, sending hazy light
rays across the lake by our house. My sister moved slowly ahead of me, dragging an oxygen canister behind her, the tubes running to her nose.
“Overrated,” I replied, not taking the Canon, “I’m almost out of film anyway.”
“If you say so,” Alice said. She stopped, arching her back like in a yoga pose, wheezing.
“I can call Dad?”
She shook her head, “Let’s...go sit on the rock...” She pointed towards one nearby. Once there, she leaned her dark, smooth head on my shoulder, looking over the golden waters.
Alice smiled, “You don’t want to take a picture of that?”
But I looked at Alice: translucent-skinned, watery-eyed, shaky-chested.
“Like I said, I’m almost out of film.”
Months later, Phillipa, my other sister, drives through Wyoming wilderness. Phillipa fills the car with her music, her bin of audiobooks, and a cooler for sandwiches that rests where my feet should be. I sit cross-legged, digging through a shoebox of film canisters. I find what I want and open the side so I can insert the film.
“Should we stop soon?” Phillipa asks.
“We’ll look for a spot when the sun starts setting.” The back seats were laid down and
spread with sleeping bags so we wouldn’t have to rent a hotel room.
“What about gas?”
“What do you mean?” I snap a picture, winding, then snap another. The film feeds nicely through the mechanisms. I pop the back shut.
Phillipa gestures at the gas gauge, “It’s close to empty.”
“We’ll make it another hour or so.”
“But there’s an exit ahead.”
“So?”
“Why don’t we just stop there? You know, if it gets empty sooner than you think,”
Phillipa flips on the turning signal.
“I know my car. We have another hour,” I adjust the camera’s aperture with quick flicks of my fingertips.
Phillipa turns onto the exit, “Gas prices aren’t bad either.”
I stonily snap a picture of the scenery outside.
While Phillipa fills up on gas, I take pictures; of the newspaper box, of a cowboy in stiff jeans buying a bag of ice, of the gas station in the foreground and an irregular hill in the background.
Later, we find a place to pull over, locking the doors, and swallowing down peanut
butter-banana sandwiches. Phillipa wastes data to Facetime her boyfriend while I fall asleep.
Early the next morning, Phillipa blasts show tunes while I take pictures of the Utah
scenery, switching out film when I run out.
“Looks like Sound of Music today, huh?” she says.
“I guess so,” I say. But she’s right. The mountains crowd blue and sheer around us. If
Alice was here, she’d sing “The Hills are Alive,” smiling even as she wheezed out of breath.
“You have the Polaroid?” Phillipa asks.
“I left it at home.”
Phillipa asks, “Could I borrow it sometime?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you to break it or something.”
“You and Alice spent hours messing around with it, and she was only a year older than me.”
“Big difference that year makes.”
“Can’t we talk about her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just not okay.”
“You’re fine.”
“Are you?”
“Sure.”
“That’s not what mom thinks,” she wipes her nose.
“Yeah?” I say, “I swear if you start crying again, I’m going to lose it. Can’t you just
drive? We’re not going to talk about this.”
“I’m not trying to be her...” Phillipa says.
“You’re not going to make this about you. You’re not getting the Polaroid.”
The day passes in stiff silence. Phillipa stares hollowly out the windshield. I shove the
shoebox in the back.
We dip through Utah, skirt around Las Vegas, then enter California. Tomorrow I have a college visit and tonight we have an Airbnb to crash at. We check in with the host, then haul our bags in. Phillipa stretches out on the couch, surfing through her phone. I take out my shower things when Phillipa says, “There’s a beach just a short drive away.”
It’s the first words she’s spoken since this morning. I say, “Let’s go.”
We change into swimsuits, pulling clothes over them before heading out. I bundle up my camera and towels before Phillipa parks on the roadside. We walk the rest of the way.
Phillipa tugs off her clothes and wades out into the ocean. She squeals as the cool water hits her skin. I wait on the beach, camera in hand.
Alice brought up Phillipa days before she died. We sat in her room as I poured over
guidebooks, marking them with a pencil. Alice suddenly touched my hand and said, “If I’m not feeling better...”
“You will,” I squeezed her hand, “Nothing’s going to ruin this trip.”
“But if not...take Phil okay?”
“She’ll be too wrapped up with her boyfriend. This trip will be the last thing on her mind, trust me. It’ll just be you and me and California beaches.”
“Lots of photos, right?”
“Always,” I said the promise I didn’t want to keep.
Ahead of me, Phillipa dances in the waters.
She’s so different from Alice. Phillipa’s glowing, she’s vitality with green eyes, she’s life
in golden hair and skin. She breathes in the ocean air with her whole body, lifting up her bare arms to take it all in. She’s not Alice, she won’t taper off with a hiss of medical machines.
I sit in the sand, holding the camera to my eye. I wind the film and take a picture.
I know what it’ll look like without getting it developed. It’ll have Phillipa, wading up to her waist, fingers dipping into the ocean, hair spraying off her tilted face, poised like a dancer. It’ll have the sunset.
On wobbly legs, I stand, dropping the Canon next to Phillipa’s flip-flops. I kick off my mules, I slide off my jeans, I wade out until I reach Phillipa.
Hannah Ziebarth is a sophomore studying elementary education. She loves uninterrupted spans of time to write, the combination of Chacos and hammocks, and spending the day hiking. She's passionate about kid's ministry, finding and sharing good stories, and ice cream.