The Reversal, and: Prelapsarian

The Reversal

A man who tries very hard to love me convinces meto leave, for the first time

in days, my bed— to go outsideto see the frozen lake. And, despite the grandeur of the vast white

field, and the novelty of boys walking across itlike novice deities, I am most interested

in the geese. Look at themsleeping, I say, nodding

to where they rest in a line along the edge of the ice, where the ice isturning back into water

in imperceptible degrees, the heady blueencroaching. And I, still

addled by grief, still immoderately exhausted by beingalive, consider (who knows why

my mind does anything it does) how the world could beflipped—blue lake for blue

sky, birds and featheredhunks of ice like clouds—

and I think then, naturally, of myselfin this reversal, standing

suddenly atop the firmament,one of heaven's citizens, perhaps now an angel, perhaps someone

waiting in the long queueto be seen. And I consider what this would mean

for me, my options. Once, someonewho loved me fiercely fiercely

said the deadhave no options, Leila, they're dead! And the angels do nothing

but God's will, loitering in the interminable meantime,useless as pigeons.

Here, the geese sleep at the edgeof the thaw, unbothered. And winter

and the boys forge ahead. And the man goes onloving me, in the periphery. So I right the earth. I stay there

as long as I can bear, looking at it.

Prelapsarian

Before the rest of it, there was Adamand me—two oldest kids on the cul de sacon the outskirts of our Michigan townwhere nothing ever happenedexcept our lives. We were just beginningto begin, pre-pre-adolescent, naive and happyas the first man and womanwho didn't yet know what they were.I was so youngI had still not come to think of myselfas anything inherentlybad or good, I hardly understoodmyself as a self, I was like an animalbefore they were named. Our world wassmall as his grandmother's voicecould reach, so we spent those years circlingsidewalks on bikes, looking at everything twice,and then again closely. We were unashamedof our interest, picking upstones to inspect their dampundersides, tramping through yardsto peek into neighbors' low windows.So when we first saw it—on the hood of the car,conjoined bodies of oneroly-poly mounting another—we observedwith the easy curiosityof one witnessing a foreign customof which they possess no prenotion or expectationto join, and when, laterthat summer, in the den with the door closed, Adamshowed me again, this timehuman, on the screen glistening in the stark light like my ideaof the divine, I wasn't afraid—I thoughtnot about skinor shame or sin, I was consumed withthe looking, not excited, not repulsed, I was looking onlyto know, and knew only what could be seen(a man and a woman, their bodiesmoving, the camera moving uptheir bodies, their faces revealingsomething I couldn't read)—and I couldn't knowwhat would come, didn't know yet the corporealmeanings of pleasure and yearningand harm, couldn't conceive there was possiblea hunger that wouldn't satisfy, a loverthat couldn't love me, a selfI shouldn't be, Ineither hated nor lovedmyself, I couldn't imagineanyone hating or loving me, and how muchI would hate to be loved, and wantwho I hated, I didn't understandmy body would hold power and would have powerheld over it, Ihad never starvedfor a man or bled for a man or said yes for a manwhen I didn't want to, I didn'tthink about men at all, I knew only my fatherand what I assumedwere other people's fathers, boys who were boysand not monsters—and I stood looking...