Some Admirations

The house always whispered with the rippling of white paper secured to the walls. You loved art, and looked for new pieces constantly, but you would never buy them right away. Instead, you made mock-ups, printing and cutting and taping, and from your hands emerged a gallery of butterfly sketches, painted beach roads, and color field rectangles in shades of yellow and blue. You hung them on the walls and examined them from close up and far away, calling the rest of us into the room to hear what we thought of them. Sometimes you took them down within a few hours. Usually you did not, and what was meant to be impermanent defied itself. In the spring and summer, when we left the windows open during the day, the papers rustled, fluttering and swelling with the wind. We would get used to them, and you would forget to buy the real piece, and so the printer paper and packaging tape were absorbed by the walls of the house, becoming part of the ordinary and overlooked.

This was your nature; this is your nature. To you, everything is beautiful, and if one just leans in close, it’s possible to absorb some of that beauty. You swivel instinctively, drawn in, always pressing nearer, as if it is something you can lap up, or stroke with open palms, or clutch close to your chest until it sinks into your skin. As if it will stick in the corners of your vision, like when you stare at a bright light and fuzzy spots of white and yellow remain long after you turn away. You signed me up for piano lessons. You would always ask me to play and sing, and when I did, I could hear your desk chair creak and groan as you turned to hear me. Sometimes you would tiptoe up the stairs, stopping on the sixth step. Sit with your knees tucked up in front of you so I couldn’t see you were there. Breathe softly.

You drink mugs of hot water, claiming it is just as soothing as tea. You feel deeply. You have somehow missed out on a collective emotional numbness. You save stacks of schoolwork, macaroni caterpillar life cycles. In the corners and cabinets of our home there are hundreds of Bonne Maman jam jars, too lovely to throw away with red and white-checkered lids and cursive inscriptions carved into the glass. You use them to hold pencils and salad dressing, but mainly they just sit and shine, tangible evidence of your attentiveness.

You take us to watch the sunrise at Battery Spencer the morning after the winter solstice every year, because from then on the days will get longer. You pack coffee into thermoses and buy donut holes at Whole Foods. You wear a knit hat, and sunglasses, so that you can stare directly into the sun. You sear that blinded, warmed feeling into your memory, and know that more is coming, get a little life back. The ride home is quiet, and you are drowsy with satisfaction. You press your forehead against the car window. Light hits your cheek in strips.

“We could go sit somewhere, and just be in beauty,” you often say when idle on a Saturday. You once drove the pair of us to the Sun Trail, pulled off Panoramic and sat down on the ground a few minutes’ walk from the car. You admired the land, and your admiration was verbalized: the sun through the oak trees, the poppies growing between your feet in shades of tangerine. I stood on the path beside you, unable to sit for a deep-rooted restlessness, a compulsion to remain one step ahead, or to the side. As much as I push against your hold on me, your influence, there are days – few and far between, but days nonetheless – when I’d like you to recreate me. To cut me out and tape me up. To flatten my doubt, to filter out nuance and my desire for freedom, but also to write me in a language of heightened morality, gratitude, and perhaps true nature. To offer me poppies and vibrancy. To let me flutter in this house of creased-page novels and abalone picture frames. Look how lovely you are.

Eva Knowles, 2022

Prose