dead jelly
The radio was on, and she pushed the chalky blue line of pastel into a smooth arc toward the top of the paper, nearly full already. The line fanned into a pocket of orange, left chalk dust in the shape of the moon or a planet.
“A jelly fish?” he asked.
She felt him standing in the doorway, heard the crisp of his apple. He slurped juice. “Uh huh,” she said. She blurred white along the outer tip of each tentacle forming indentations in sand.
“It’s dead.” Another bite. He slurped.
Too much white. She chose brown.
“Why do you keep drawing all this dead stuff?” The step creaked when he adjusted his stance, leaned, heavy shouldered, against the door jamb. “It’s creeping me out.”
“So, don’t look at it, then. Sleep with the lights on.” She blew another pool of chalk dust from the paper and grumbled when it left a tiny smear.
“Hilarious.” She heard the lid of the trashcan open, the thud of his apple core, and shut. “You know,” he said from the kitchen, “you painted me live jellies once. Do you remember those?”
She did.
“I liked those. Maybe you could go back to painting shit that isn’t dead.”
A sea lion.
Three pelicans.
A dog on a bridge.
A deer in the median.
One whale that never made it off the beach–during their Florida trip–despite an army of experts with their hands at their sides.
These impromptu memorials, tucked into a Dead Wild Things portfolio. She didn’t hang them, didn’t frame them. “Those jellies were in an aquarium.”
He reappeared, sat on the piano bench. His tennis shoes nearly toed her box of busted pastels. “Yes? And?”
“And so, they were behind plexiglass. I don’t want to draw anymore through a TV screen or a picture or behind plexiglass.” As if that should explain everything. “I only see them dead.”
