J.M. Cinq-Mars lives in Massachusetts and uses a made-up name for her email.  Her publishing history is sporadic.  She has seen Pink Floyd twice and wanted to marry David Gilmour for over a decade.  She has a very funny boss.  She also wears scarves, which is why her neck is never cold.

I Have Never Flown (February 20, 2009. Issue 15.)

Maybe I took a train. Maybe it headed west, past the moon, to a mountain ridge. Maybe I walked away from the station and into the snow and maybe the cold I felt was not physical.

One day, I said: “When I was 35 years old I had to write my brother‘s obituary.” But I could not find the next sentence. So I never said those exact words to anyone, ever again.

I have a terrible memory. Names, directions, life goals; they have all slipped away from me. I had a boy once but I kicked him away because his memory was too sharp. He would say things to me like, “Remember when you said you wanted children?” and “Remember how you told me you’d never do it again?”

His recollections offended me. I was put off by his cream-colored rooms and steady voice. What right did he have to do those things to me?

For a long time after my brother died I got high every night. Then I’d go home and watch Intervention on the web. I don’t think I need to explain why I did this.

But one morning I woke up in paisley sheets. My head hurt and my feet were cold. A man came into the bedroom and asked me how I was. I said fine. Then he asked me what my name was.

I said, “It could be anything.” Immediately I was exhausted. I lay in his bed the rest of the day.

He gave me his phone number. He told me to call him if I wanted to talk. He told me he had lost people too. He said it is a common thing, this losing of people, and I waited until I was out in the street, headed west, before I cried.

Lose, lose, lose, and lose. If you write it down enough, in snow or potting soil or on your skin with a sharp object, you reach the point where you no longer recognize the word. And that is a good and barren place to be.

Eventually I wound up in rehab. You knew that was coming, right? I didn’t have an intervention, I merely parked my Jetta on a train track and the police came and decided I needed an evaluation.

When I got out I called the man with the paisley sheets. I said, “I’m clean now,” and “sorry it’s been so long” and “do you remember me” and “today is the day my brother died.”

And the man said, “I know.” And I said, “He really died in February.” And the man said, “I know that too.” And I said, “Everyday is a dying day.” And he said, “Why don’t I pick you up?”

I was sitting outside the hospital. He got out of his car and walked up to me and stared. Then he sat down next to me and put an arm around my shoulders.

I leaned against him and began to cry. “I have nothing,” I told him. I took jagged breaths and cried in that strange way that some animals do before they die. As if they are mourning themselves from afar.

“You have a clean slate,” the man said. And laughter bubbled up from me. I told him I hated clichés and anyway it was not possible for anyone past the age of 7 to have a clean slate.

He said, “I know” to the first and “that’s not always true” to the second.

He took me to the train station. There was a train heading west to Philadelphia. I knew my brother had never been there. So I got on it and waved good-bye. I leaned my forehead against the dirty glass and whispered over and over, “Clean slate, clean slate.”