by Rolli
I’m nervous. It’s the part of the movie where you know something big has to happen because there’s only ten minutes left.
The trees are getting thicker.
My red hands are burning and shaking.
I almost wish I was home.
The Sun
I like looking out the window, I liked to, in my room. There wasn’t much to see. But I still liked to.
I saw my parents walking home. They didn’t see me. The looked heartbroken. Like plants that hadn’t been watered. I know they want to do the normal family stuff but most normal family places don’t have a wheelchair lift or the right accessories. When people ask them in a confidential voice how they’re doing they put on their smiles and then after peel them off like a sunburn.
I guess I’m the sun.
One Rotund Tragedy
My life has been one rotund tragedy. It’s sad. There are so many things that can go right, but sometimes they all flop over like they smelled gas. My mom had maybe a kindergarten of miscarriages. They were all me’s that gave it their pathetic best but couldn’t quite make a go of it. And then I gave it my equally pathetic best but for some reason just barely made it. I sometimes wonder if my embryo had just smothered itself in egg yolk like the others if things would have turned out so much better for everyone. My parents would’ve bought a dog.
David Copperfield is good but not so good that you’d sit in acid reading it.
It’s almost that good.
Something
He sometimes makes these beast sounds. It’s this throat-whistling like a dog that’s struggling to get comfortable. I’d say he’s nervous or in pain. Maybe if you get nervous enough and hurt bad enough you lose it.
This all makes sense to him, I guess. It means something. Hopefully it does because my own life has been meaningless. I haven’t been anything to anyone.
But to the old man . . .
It’s sad, but I guess I might be something.
Green Acres
I could barely see it in the moonlight but I’m pretty sure the sign I scratched my arm against read: “GREEN ACRES.”
Green Acres looked much more like a large, dark forest. When it comes to children entering forests, good things don’t generally happen.
The second time I fell out of my chair, I hit my head on a tree trunk. I didn’t hit it that hard but . . . My brain is the only thing I have going for me. I wouldn’t mind, really, being a brain in a jar. As long as I could still read David Copperfield.
I couldn’t see anything in the forest. All I could hear was the squealing of my wheels and the crunchy cereal things they were crushing. All I could think of was the birds and squirrels leaning out of their tree holes and staring. What they were probably thinking was “better her than us.”
The old man slowed down a bit.
He stopped.
There was some kind of building just ahead. It had a doorway but no door. The old man pushed me through it.
It was black inside. The old man wheeled me a few feet then turned me around so I faced the door hole.
There was a clunk like he’d thrown down his walking stick. Then a crunch like he was lying down in leaves. Pretty soon he was snoring.
I stared at the doorway for a long time. When the moon went behind a cloud, the doorway disappeared.
I’m never going to see anyone ever again.
Again
When I woke up at dawn, I was lying on the floor beside my wheelchair.
It was an old shack full of leaves.
The old man was gone. So was his stick.
A raccoon ran out of the room.
I squirmed a bit and got my memorandum book out of the side pouch and a pen.
I wrote until I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in my chair and the chair was moving. My memorandum book was on my lap. I kept tipping forward and almost falling out and the old man kept stopping and pulling me back.
I held on tight to my memorandum book.
I passed out again.
The Sea-Wave XI
But nothing in life surprises. Truly. Not even . . . the extraordinary thing. It is only a page. One page. There will still be another, and another. A thrilling page, an awful. They will all, as stems of grass, bend over. For our poet lies dreaming. With his dreaming book. On the green lawn. It lays . . . on his breastbone, open. The book. And the wind — he is dreaming — takes his words away. They turn to ash seed. And they blow away.
So Much
There’s so much to live for.
I just haven’t figured out what.
The Sea-Wave XII
I have prayed this living was a dream.
I have even prayed.
Collapse
He was pushing me slowly. It was so windy.
A leaf fell in my hair.
The old man fell.
I thought he was running. I moved so fast. He was falling.
My chair tipped back and slammed hard on the ground. My head slid back off my headrest over I think his walking-stick. The old man’s face slammed right onto my face. My nose fit right between his nose and his lips. His breath fogged up my glasses and smelled like death. I could only see fog.
Then I felt his one hand sliding down my arm. He was maybe trying to grab my hand. But then he just stopped moving.
He made a soft noise.
Then my glasses unfogged.
Black Hole
The old man’s throat is a black hole.
When I look down, I can see his eyes.
I try not to look down.
I moved my head back and forth until his head fell off me and onto the ground beside me. Then I reached for my memorandum book.
There’s still a few pages left.
The End of the Story
This wasn’t what I pictured. When I pictured the end of the story.
It’s the end of the story.
I haven’t been okay in a long time. I’ve been hurting for a long, long time. When you’re suffering . . .
Suffering ends. One way or the other.
It had to happen.
It’s happening.
Leaves
You think of things differently. You do. You can be sad when you’re dying, but you can’t hate yourself. You’re barely there. You can’t hate vapour or a rare mineral. Whoever you were isn’t there.
I’m turning to leaves. It feels like. I feel so light.
I’ll turn to leaves.
Then I’ll blow away.
Mom, Dad
. . .
Pain
I’m in so much pain.
My stomach hurts bad.
My heart broke.
Untitled
I can hear the ocean.
I don’t know where I am.
Acknowledgements
Extracts from The Sea-Wave were first published in The Walrus (online), Broken Pencil, Word Riot and Writing Tomorrow. My thanks to the editors. Thanks to Guernica, too.
About the Author
Rolli is a writer, illustrator and cartoonist from Regina, SK, Canada. He’s the author of two short story collections (I Am Currently Working On a Novel and God’s Autobio), two collections of poems (Mavor’s Bones and
Plum Stuff) and two children’s titles (Kabungo and Dr. Franklin’s Staticy Cat). His cartoons appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, Harvard Business Review, The Walrus, Adbusters and other popular outlets. Visit Rolli’s website (rollistuff.com) and follow him on Twitter @rolliwrites.
Copyright © 2016, Charles Anderson (Rolli) and Guernica Editions Inc.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement o
f the copyright law.
Michael Mirolla, general editor
David Moratto, interior and cover design
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2016935359
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rolli, 1980-, author
The sea-wave [electronic resource] / Rolli.
(Essential prose ; 121)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77183-053-9 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77183-054-6 (epub).--
ISBN 978-1-77183-055-3 (mobi)
I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 121
PS8635.O4465S42 2016 C813’.6 C2016-901518-1 C2016-901519-X
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