#did you know geese. grab their neck. this is a mistake you can always count on

[fishmongeringstudies]

five: the ballad of the goose-girl

once upon a time there was a goose who wanted to become a man. or there was a man who wanted to become a goose. or there were both, or there were none, or there were many of the same spell. once upon a time there were ten thousand geese and they wanted to go south. why? because it was too cold up here, they said. too far from the equator. too lonely.

one of the geese was called jorge. jorge had been assigned the role of miserable family caretaker with an inferiority complex from birth but a brief spell of rebellion in their teenage years led to their official disengagement from the role and subsequently, the adopting of a new one. jorge was a philosopher. their favorite philosopher was kant. they had never read any kant because geese can't read.

dimitri could read. dimitri was a goose but there was, how do you put it, something a little off about her. sometimes dimitri woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, her blankets kicked to the other end of the room, babbling about microeconomics and the supply-demand curve for cross-continental flying gear. dimitri was in a mad, one-sided love that consumed her body and soul, but this wasn't that bad in the broader scheme of things because this gave jorge, who couldn't read, something to do.

sometimes dimitri would read jorge poetry. dimitri had memorized every book of poetry in the main branch of the national library when she made a stopover there in her youth and could now be called upon to recite almost any poem from memory, as long as she didn't hate the poet. for example, dimitri hated sylvia plath. no matter how much jorge begged and pleaded with her as they flew over the skyscrapers of new york, the masses of writhing trees and open fields dotted with cows and sheep and death, she would not change her mind. 'please,' jorge would say while they stopped to rest on the fender of some college student's beat-up honda civic. 'read me a poem. any poem.' 'you mean,' dimitri would say, taking a drag from her cigarette. 'read me a plath poem.' 'that's not what i said,' jorge would respond defensively, because jorge was the kind of goose that assumes the world is out to get them no matter what and sticks their head in the gift-horse's mouth and then screams down its gullet for five minutes. finally, dimitri would laugh. 'that's what you mean.' then the conversation would end.

one day dimitri and jorge got separated from the flock. this was not unprecedented, as dimitri had been lagging behind for a few days now and jorge, being her designated attendant, had stayed with her. but it was just as frightening for jorge as it had been the first time, fifteen years ago when dimitri had pitched out of the sky halfway across philadelphia like an anvil and jorge had found her sprawled on the fender of some sad person's fucked-up lamborghini, looking like an angel in a bad insurance advertisement. it was always the fenders. dimitri had a thing for fenders.

dimitri also had a thing for letting her long, healthy history of communication problems fuck up her relationships with other geese, a habit she had picked up in her youth alongside smoking, lying, and reciting poetry. she was doing all three of the latter as they circled around the deserted shopping complex a fifth time, the sun a blurry white spot a few feet beneath their heads. 'did you know,' said dimitri, a cigarette clamped in her beak.

'no, i don't know,' said jorge.

'asshole. i haven't started speaking yet.'

jorge observed the setting sun with a detached kind of panic. 'yes you have.' they brushed something out of their eye with their wing. the smoke from dimitri's cigarette kept getting into their eyes. it was making it hard to concentrate on not being sad. 'you said 'did you know.''

'that's not the important part.'

'then what is the important part?'

'the important part is-'

south meant many things to many creatures. depending on who you asked and what time of the day it was when you did, you might get anything ranging from 'the southern tip of malaysia' to 'nineteen-seventy-five'. right now, in this particular snapshot of time, south meant the following things. for jorge, it meant freedom. for dimitri, it meant-

'-is that every shopping mall is a little haunted.'

jorge was unimpressed. most things were haunted to some degree or another. it was a very old world and the people that lived in it were all very broken, but that didn't stop the broken things from wanting to hang around, even after their ribs had cracked open and their lungs were smeared with soot. they told dimitri as much.

dimitri cleared her throat, which was hard to do while lying and smoking and flying in a circle around a deserted haunted shopping complex but otherwise feasible for a geese as competent as her. she turned to look at jorge, the trickle of her gaze sliding over their white, wind-tossed body like a cool hand over a flame.

'what i'm saying is let's spend the night there.'

;

once upon a time there was a goose named dimitri who was in a mad, requited love that consumed her body and soul. her partner was a poet, of course, because all geese want to fall in love with a poet, but here's the catch. jie ting never told dimitri which poems were about her. dimitri spent years trying to coax the confessions out of her, making her breakfasts in bed, bringing home cute little mice with their tails tied up in butterfly knots, kissing the spot where her wing met the curve of her body with the kind of reverence worshipers reserve for the day they meet their creator, but jie ting was stubborn and beautiful and kind and dimitri could never bring herself to do the truly horrible thing, to walk into her study and crack open the journals she kept those intimacies in. in spite of this, well, this thing between them, they were happy. they puttered around making cups and plates out of wet clay. they told stories about their cousins who had gotten lost in rain forests in the amazon and streets in taipei. every year they made the long journey down south, and then flew back up in the spring. and then jie ting died, and then there was no one left to coax anything out of.

the doctors said there was nothing dimitri could have done for her. for every million perfectly preventable deaths there are two to three freak accidents, faultless failures, broken vessels. and for every broken body on the pavement, trampled by cars bigger than the both of them combined, there was a broken heart.

dimitri closed up their old haunt in the woods. she broke all the mugs and gave all the bones back to their grieving micey relatives, who were horrified, and then angry, and then sad. then she flew all the way down to singapore and learned every poem in every poetry book they had in the national library, a looming glass building in the heart of the business district, and dragged her battered body all the way back up north, through miles and miles of snow-kissed nothing, and then jorge returned home in the spring with the rest of the good ones, the ones who weren't fucked in the head, who still had hope to speak of.

she can teach me poetry, thought jorge.

they definitely went to a liberal arts college, thought dimitri.

neither of these things are true. but neither are the stories that led them to each other. a lie canceled out a lie and after the dust had settled and dimitri had recovered from the ghost of death on her shoulder, they found each other standing right where they had started out, on opposite ends of the same crooked street.

;

the perfume store smelled like sixteen layers of hell distilled into a single bottle of wine that had been left to ferment for a few millennia and then smashed in a pool of vomit but it was the only place that wasn't so overgrown with vines that jorge could clear out a place for dimitri to lie down. they did so with an efficiency that startled even themselves, brushing dust and old receipts aside with one wing and spritzing the whole place clean with the other. dimitri was then coerced into the little sacred spot, though she was deeply reluctant and jorge was deeply embarrassed about the whole thing. desperate times call for desperate measures. when there are two geese and one perfume store and nineteen shades of bergamot and lavender, one learns to quieten their demons.

the funny thing about geese is that they are about sixty-percent neck and forty-percent everything else and yet a goose lying sideways occupies two hundred percent of the previous amount because geese are conceited like that. dimitri took up more than enough space on the shelf in the perfume store from hell, but with a little maneuvering she was able to make enough space to pull jorge down beside her. the funny thing about geese is they have very big egos, and very small dreams.

'imagine i am your mother,' said dimitri, waving one wing idly in the dark. 'singing you a lullaby as you drift off, packing your lunchbox for school, turning out the light in your bedroom.'

jorge's eye twitched. 'huh? i will not,' they said. 'that's disgusting.'

'oh. you think i'm disgusting?'

'no, that's not what i mean-'

'-but that's what you said.'

'-i said the idea of you as my mother is disgusting.' jorge hid their face in their feathers but their beak was too long and stuck out in a highly noticeable manner, therefore ruining the effect altogether. they grumbled to themselves, then spent a few minutes contemplating the fifteen feet of nothing that lay before them. a field of snow, ash, or flowers. darkness could be whatever you wanted it to be. that was part of the appeal of closing your eyes.

'hey,' they said.

'mm?'

'why won't you recite a plath poem?'

the sound of something soft against the wall. dimitri was brushing the flat of her wing along the wall behind her, over the faded labels and the peeling tiffany blue paint. 'because i can't.'

'but you know them, don't you,' jorge pressed.

'i do.'

'then?'

'how old are you this year, jorge?'

'old enough to read depressing poetry.'

'but not old enough to have fallen in love.' she withdrew her wing from the wall. it came away caked in dust and old memories. rich, gold-kissed families with kids in little bow-ties, babies forgotten in well-lit dressing rooms, the occasional stabbing. 'am i wrong?'

jorge bristled behind her. 'what does love have to do with this?'

'because,' dimitri mused, and jorge felt every sound that she made in their chest, where the heart was working furiously to keep blood circulating without end. 'all poems are love poems.'

'you know,' said jorge.

'i don't know.'

'good. you shouldn't.' jorge curled themselves tighter, so the two hundred percent became a hundred and ninety-five. 'i'm going to sleep. good night.'

;

once upon a time there was a goose who would do anything for her lover and then that lover died. once upon a time there was a goose who was really good at literary analysis, so good she could have taught at harvard if she hadn't wanted to be closer to her lover, who worked in non-profit and spent most of her time abroad, and then her lover died. once upon a time there was a goose. and she knew a lot of poetry. it was the last thing she did for jie ting, with the gray-dusted coat and the heather eyes. do geese have heather eyes? fuck it. this one did.

once upon a time there was a goose who really wanted to go to a liberal arts college, but their dad gambled all their savings away on a business venture which went bust moments before the big cash-out and so the college fund became a college black hole, a college financial aid form which procured miserably few sympathies from the financial aid office, a college nothing. this goose was really quite smart, though they couldn't prove it to save their life. but the other goose knew. the other goose wasn't as smart. she'd just had more money. and worse luck.

this isn't a love story. in this story there are no love stories because in some languages every story is a love story, and if everything is something then there is really nothing, no takeaway at the end of the parable, no shard of glass in the sand. imagine you're walking along the coastline in a white dress made from diamonds and you step on that shard of glass. there goes your foot. what will you do? the world is ending.

in the morning dimitri wakes up first. she touches jorge's forehead with the tip of one wing, then the flat of it, then the side. there's a bar of sunlight coming in through a gap in the moth-bitten blinds and it falls across jorge's face in rivulets of gold-leaf, liquid wonder. she watches them sleep for a few minutes, their chest rising and falling and trembling with all that infallible youth, with the faithless determination of someone whose body has grown older but whose soul has stayed as faultless, as clueless, as divine. if god were a goose it would be jorge. says who? says dimitri, who has god's number saved on her phone.

once, a few months ago, she wrote a poem. this she read out to jorge, while they were flying over the rooftops of san diego, each word falling out of her mouth like stars, like things she should have really kept to herself and in the safety of untouchable darkness and yet jorge was looking at her. she was reading this poem and jorge was looking at her and it wasn't the kind of look you gave someone you found by the side of the road, someone who had helped you with your college apps and tied your tie on prom night. it was the kind of look you gave an angel you wanted to pin to the sheets.

'is this poem about someone?' asked jorge, who was for all their cluelessness and cruelty, quite terribly perceptive when one wanted them least to be.

panicking, dimitry dropped her cigarette. she shook her head. 'no.' she shook her head again, for emphasis.

once, dimitri had a fit of coughs so bad she passed out right there in the lobby of that high school. the doctors said it was her lungs. her friends said it was the cigarettes. jie ting, who was long dead by then, said it was the heartbreak. put it back together, said the ghost of her dead lover. you can put yourself back together. maybe i don't want to, dimitri said, a sheaf of papers falling out of the pocket of her coat.

once, she didn't go south. she went up north in search of forgiveness, and when jorge arrived in the spring, they were as lovely as she remembered them being while she had gotten nowhere. still stuck in place, spinning in slow circles, watching god die on a white-gold stage. still mourning.

'i'll write you a poem,' jorge said the other day. 'to thank you.' for being the first person. for being the first person ever.

'don't bother,' she told them.

'i'll do it anyway.'

'i won't read it.'

'you will.'

once there was a goose and another goose and they were all lovely and sad with long, elegant necks and hard, sharp beaks for cracking things open but all they ever did was crack themselves open, like if you hurt yourself enough times you could make the world give you back what it had taken away. but that's not how it works. you know this. you know this, don't you? dimitri? dimitri?

dimitri's still in that old perfume store. she's leaning closer and closer to sleeping beauty, with the lanky limbs and the merry-go-round smile, and she's whispering something, though she'll never tell you what and you'll never get the chance to ask, she's breathing like the air's made of glass. sea-glass. have you ever seen the ocean? she'll take you one day. your name is jorge and you're asleep. you're being kissed on the mouth by a very beautiful person. she's going to die.

but all living things die eventually, you counter. you don't get it. you are missing the point.

that's fine. miss the point. keep sleeping. the moon pulls away from you the way some people pull knives out of bodies, like she can feel every inch of distance she puts between yourselves in her chest, where the heart is working furiously to keep life alive. she pulls away and it hurts her, you know. did you know? you can fall in love twice. you can fuck yourself up twice. there's always room in the cupboard for more ceramic mugs. she made you one. she'll never give it to you. you never asked.

that's your first kiss. and your second, and your third, and as you grow older the kisses will meld together into this looming memory of touch, sensation, heat, softness, girls, girls, girl. girl with the cigarette between her teeth. girl with the sharpshooter eyes, the gunmetal laugh. girl walking you home, girl flying you across the starless city, girl singing you a lullaby when you're eighteen and the world hates people like you who give life everything you've got and have the audacity to think it'll listen.

girl walking out of the perfume store. girl stepping into the half-light. girl leaving you behind.

or maybe it's the other way around. this way you will be able to catch up to the rest of the flock, this way you will make it to the other side of the world before winter gets its hands around your ankles. she's giving you an opportunity. take it. i said take it.

south means a lot of things depending on who you ask. for jorge, it's freedom, new skies, sunsets drenched in whiskey. for jorge it's the second best thing about being alive. for dimitri, it's death.

once upon a time there was a goose and their name was jorge. once upon a time there was a goose and her name was dimitri. in another version of this story they meet each other before the accident and the hospitals and the house in the woods, the financial crash, the long, cruel winter. in another version they kiss with their eyes open, their hearts unspooling around the confession, the truth, the sacred thing that lets people be happy with each other. in another version of this story jorge says read me a poem and dimitri says i'll read you something sweeter, and then she reads them a love poem.

in this one, one goose dies, and the other keeps flying.

A smile fell in the grass. Irretrievable! And how will your night dances Lose themselves. In mathematics? Such pure leaps and spirals - Surely they travel The world forever, I shall not entirely Sit emptied of beauties, the gift Of your small breath, the drenched grass Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies. Their flesh bears no relation. Cold folds of ego, the calla, And the tiger, embellishing itself - Spots, and a spread of hot petals. The comets Have such a space to cross, Such coldness, forgetfulness. So your gestures flake off - Warm and human, then their pink light Bleeding and peeling Through the black amnesias of heaven. Why am I given These lamps, these planets Falling like blessings, like flakes Six sided, white On my eyes, my lips, my hair Touching and melting. Nowhere.

05.25.21

#poem at the end is night dances by sylvia plath #did you know geese. grab their neck. this is a mistake you can always count on