Space: A Tryptic — By C. Christine Fair

artwork by Ciara Duffy

Miscarriage

It took years to muster the courage to assemble the detritus of his loss. His mangled body could scarcely fill a teacup, yet it swallowed us up whole. It towed us to the cold depths of darkness like a once resplendent sunken ship now buried in silt, savaged by barnacles.

Garage Sale

Many years have passed since that day I saw him, unviable, without a heartbeat, in a swirl of blood and tissue, to be discarded as medical waste. Not yet human but loved. I gathered the things I bought for him, now part of the litter of our lives. I boxed them and set them out in the neighborhood yard sale. A woman whose belly was stretched tight like a drum handed me thirty dollars as her wife picked up the box. Avoiding the painful intimacy of neighbors, our eyes met briefly before they walked away with what remained of him.

Space

Jeff is in the kitchen making coffee. He’s wearing yesterday’s jeans and T-shirt. His hair is ruffled and his teeth unbrushed. His breath is redolent of last night’s chicken tikka.  Our three pitbulls gather around him, anxiously wanting breakfast. I’m in yesterday’s sweatsuit that I slept in. I’m lingering, waiting for the coffee. We are all waiting for Jeff. The fragrance of the coffee wafts up as the beans bloom. The distance between has grown. We lost our ability to touch and be touched. To love, be loved. Now, our dogs cram in to fill the yawning space between us.

C. Christine Fair is a Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. She completed her PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilization at the University of Chicago. Her creative pieces have appeared in Hyptertext, Lunch Ticket, Bangalore Review, Glassworks, and Existere Journal of Arts, among others in addition to her scholarly work. She causes trouble in multiple languages: Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.