Excerpt from DES MONSTERAS
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To lose someone when they, or you,
are still new is to lose whatever was
real and also all the possibilities. In
my first year my mother was often
whisked to hospital. I assume that
at home her allegiance was often
torn between me and her pain. That
her pain often won and clouded me
out. That, undiagnosed, she must
have at times been sure she was
dying; felt I was too much for her,
in her state, to care for; wished that
I might die instead. A mother might
never admit this, but imagining it
gives me a jolt like remembering.
Maybe I didn’t invent feeling so
unwanted, or my own reasons to
flinch. My mother always returned
but I almost never stopped waiting.
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I moved to stop stagnating. I
wanted to leave stillness behind like
an airless city. I wanted to use my
courage before I couldn’t. On the
phone in my Toronto bed, from my
good, flat, life, I’d told Erin I feared
the window slamming shut. “What
window?” She’d asked. Pause. “The
heart window?” Yes. You don’t pull
up your roots and put them down
someplace else, said James
Baldwin, or, if you do, you’ll be
aware of precisely what it means,
knowing that your real roots are
always elsewhere. I’m learning just
how lonely it is to crack, to crank,
the heart window open where new
lovers keep their roots tucked under
the mattress.
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Reminiscing about when we met,
Lisan said she liked my “absorbing
ways”: that, listening, I really
seemed to soak things in. The
different way this man absorbed
soothed and impressed me. Silently,
he offered a shape, a frame, a shock-
absorbing sturdiness. I felt
like I could rattle around, around
him, without rolling away; that he
could hold me —brace me—
without stifling me. It meant
so much to know that Lisan saw my
listening right off the bat. I often
fear that my quiet just looks like
void. Now I wonder if that’s what his
quiet was, if he only let me natter
like a radio to try to drown his
heartbreak out, for a little while.
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Author’s Bio
Heather White lives in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke. Her writing on art and culture has appeared in Canadian Art, the Brooklyn Rail, Real Life, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her current practice experiments with hybrid forms and memoir, and she’s now at work on a collection about leaving. She is the winner of the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook DES MONSTERAS.
