She of the Mountains (14 page)

Shiv guides us solemnly through the trees that sway around us until we reach it. I recall the tree by the colour of its bark, a hint of maroon, though it is no longer the tallest of its companions.

This is it.

Ganesh bends down and puts his head to the fallen leaves and wet earth.

Then he begins to sing. I immediately recognize his song—the notes too high, the melody too beautiful.

I stand over him and sing with him.

Home is a painting. A painting purchased from IKEA.

Do you think it's in bad taste? IKEA art?

Who cares? It's beautiful.

It was.

It was a painting of Manhattan in black and white and from the sky's perspective. All the grandeur and busyness of a big city captured and unusually still.

They had hung the painting over their bed. On some mornings, after he would leave for work, she would linger under the duvet, look up, and reminisce about their travel adventures. And whenever he was distracted while he read, he would stare at it to ground him. He dreamed names and lives and quests associated with each apartment light. He even reserved a small window light in the right-hand corner just for them.

Wouldn't it be great to live in New York for a year?
she had said.

It would.

We could really experience the city. Not just as tourists.

Yeah, but there is no way they are going to let two brown people move to New York.

Especially not with your beard.

They chuckled.

The painting became a fixture of their bedroom, as vital as the bed itself, and over time, he couldn't imagine their home without it.

Now, they had the unimaginable task of drawing a line between their possessions, to be divided into her boxes and his boxes. As his hand touched every object and fixture, it re-awakened a unique memory, a precious history that was embedded in each.

one painting

one bed

one TV

one couch

one recliner

four bar stools

four mugs

eight plates

four bowls

two frying pans

one bottle of ketchup

one bottle of soy sauce

one bottle of Patak's pickle

one box of pasta

two towels

two dish towels

one bottle of Windex

two sets of bed sheets

one clotheshorse

one stool

two lamps

two bookshelves

one alarm clock

one desk

one cutlery set

He was certain his heart would literally break and often crossed his arms over his chest to keep it intact. But he was profoundly wrong. He discovered that a home could break, but a heart could not. That their home could break, but his heart would not despite how much he wished it would. His heart could actually withstand the dissolution of his home, and this was where the pain came from. Pain was his heart bearing and bearing and bearing and bearing and bearing and bearing and bearing and bearing. Pain was the sound of his relentless heartbeat, pushing forward as though nothing was changing. Pain was knowing that he was the cause of her pain, the reason why her eyes were without their sparkle and wonder. Pain was not knowing if he was making a monumental mistake, wanting to reach out to her and say,
I'm sorry, I've changed my mind
.

Pain was a bare white wall where a painting once hung. A painting sold to strangers through Craigslist.

After he left her, he turned to another body—water.

Every day, the water taught him something new about how to connect to his own body.

The first step, the hardest step, was taking off his clothes. Allowing his body to be exposed to light and air—to be free. Only then could he enter the pool.

His second challenge was learning how to float. He tread close to the pool's edge in case he needed to latch onto it for support. His body fought hard against the water, resisting it, not unlike how he had resisted his own body. It was only after he exhausted himself from splashing and kicking aimlessly, when he fully surrendered to the water, that he stopped drowning.

As his body elongated with each lap, the water encouraged him to stretch out and slow down his thoughts so he could observe each one. The buzzing of his never-ending to-do list softened and lost its urgency.

Respond to email.

The water showed him how to release the day's disappointments with each breath in-between strokes, so that the weight he carried was only that of his physical self. When his head was fully submerged again, the taste of chlorine acted as the final cleanse. Drained of the superfluous, his body didn't feel so unmanageable.

The water also gave him an open and quiet space where he could cry without being seen. Water to water—this is when he felt they were closest, they were friends.

He often thought of her when he was in the water. Although a chapter of their relationship had ended, one year later, he found that there was still no period to their sentence. Their sentence kept finding a way, because they kept finding a way to make room for a comma and another comma and another conjunction, because there was still so much to share, still so much more to say.

Once we were bacteria. We were simple cells for three billion years.

We grew complex. Our cells wanted to grow, work, and reproduce.

Once we were jellyfish, free-swimming.

We learned how to crawl before we grew feet. We colonized the land. Our blood turned warm. Our arms stretched into wings, and we sought homes everywhere beneath the clouds.

Because it was necessary.

For millennia, I have been evolving into this version of myself, this body. To know yours.

Because it was necessary.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not be possible without Shemeena Shraya, Trish Yeo, and Raymond Biesinger.

A special thank you to the Arsenal Pulp Press team, Adam Holman, Farzana Doctor, Karen Campos, Maureen Hynes, Margot Francis, Caleb Nault, Marilyn McLean, Amber Dawn, Kathryn Payne, Tegan Quin, Sara Quin, RM Vaughn, Shyam Selvadurai, Rakesh Satyal, Dale Hall, Katherine Friesen, and my family.

VIVEK SHRAYA
is a multimedia artist, working in the mediums of music, performance, literature, and film. His first book,
God Loves Hair
, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist first published in 2011 and reissued in a new edition from Arsenal Pulp Press in 2014. Winner of the We Are Listening International Singer/Songwriter Award, Vivek has released albums ranging from acoustic folk-rock to electro synth-pop. His most recent is
Breathe Again
, a tribute to the songs of R&B artist Babyface. His short film,
What I LOVE about being QUEER
, has expanded to include an online project and Lambda Literary Award-nominated book with contributions from around the world. He lives in Toronto.

RAYMOND BIESINGER
is a self-taught illustrator based in Montreal who spent a very long time in Canada's west. His work has appeared in everything from
The New Yorker
to
Le Monde
to
The Walrus
to
Dwell
, and he likes concepts, making music, progressive politics, and a curious mix of minimalism and maximalism. He deploys physical things, electronic means, and a BA in history to make his images, and has done so in over 1,400 projects since the year 2000.