OPAH

Sixteen months from now, you might wonder what I mean to you. Wandering in the library, strolling and mulling, because you’re a tedious reader. And you miss things. You should be focusing on the road ahead of us. Speeding through Bracebridge. The snow is making it so hard to see. Your snores are making it so hard to think, and on so long a drive? I can’t sleep. So I’m pulling over for gas at the Petro, and I bother telling your soulless body I love you. But I should tell you I’m tired too. That I’m laid out in the lakebed, phasing out of time again. Looking for a kickstart. The lady at the counter is lukewarm like you. “There’s a Blizzard ahead”, she says. The air in Algonquin is so indecisive. Cigarettes in hand, I come back to your head still pressed against the passenger window, eyes smushed together, drowsy lips drawn apart. But where I stand, I can’t tell smoke from exhaust fumes. From fractured memories to Phragmites touching down in the clearing, drooping with poise. Entire highways glossed over by crystal colonies, water in time, surely, returning to this melody that makes me think of you. Feeling your radio waves cascade in my guts; your drums bumping in flux, easy-riding strings crying in the open spaces. Releasing this moment feels just perfect, and nothing may ever come this close to bliss again. So, is it you I should be thanking? And how could I ever repay you?

Well, I could start by telling a truth: This drive is paying a toll on me. Or maybe it’s you, sixteen months from now, loitering in my fried noodle like egg yolk, trying to rob me of this rapture. Like snowdrift on the precipice. You can’t tell if this is a lucid trip, but you can’t be convinced that I don’t exist. I’m there, you know, up on the clouds, fishing for a reason. Because you’re always coming up short of them. You make me want to empty all the Butterflies from my stomach. You make me want to rub these Mountains down to boulders. You make me want to start over. Dropping everything I need just to coast in your rhythm again. Coping in your temporary embrace. Watching the time go by. You made the drive alright. But I should be focusing on the road ahead. I’m evaporating in your sleep, melting through the seat cushions, and now, just when you thought this feeling meant something – you’re the most alone you’ve ever felt. Pelting hail thaws midair and batters the hood in soft explosions. You love the song.

I don’t know how I feel about you. I don’t know if I even feel as much because that was a lifetime ago. And now? You wouldn’t understand. I’m not all here. I’ve been skipping through the days, taking my strolls in the library to see if anything lasted. To see if I can read that road again and map your path onto mine. In retrospect, it was the moments you paid little mind that mattered. The moments that forever hold a piece of our spirited time together, buried in the snowbank by that lonely gas station. The things that grey. I’ve been living weeks in advance lately. Moving through time simply by shutting my eyes. But for the sake of staying awake, I tell myself not to dream about you. Letting the rain song patter out. This isn’t Ontario. That was sixteen very long months ago when you knew the weight of eight letters rearranged. When you were my home. My Opah. My Moon Fish. Nodding off in the numb lake.

Gavin Duncan is a senior graduating from SUNY ESF with a B.S. in Environmental Studies. Gavin has written a book titled “Sleepwalking” that will be available for free on June 5th and can be found in the linktree in his Instagram account @gavinjduncan. After graduating, Gavin plans on pursuing further study into the decolonization of nature through language, which was the topic of his senior synthesis, and will continue working in the early education sector.