Marginalia for Canopic Jars

Part way through anything, now, you
Become still as the depths of springs, placed too high.

You
Are like Alexandria; you are smoke, wrapped 

In words caught off-page. They are caught still, rising

Their author didn’t whisper 
When the copyist came around, and the copyist forgot
Canopic jars or maybe ink – 

That’s why the lungs are missing. 

That’s why my heart is missing. I saw
The alligator, Ammit, on your behalf:

It’s true, she cries. Her tears are flame, but
All day long she still writes
New parts
From notes nobody took

On bodies. Nobody takes enough notes, they find (later)
To reconstruct –

(Alive again, they make 
Do with marginalia) –

Now, your lungs, my heart 
Is gone, my heart is gilt
My heart is marginalia and ink or
Alligator tears or
Canopic jars of salt and this time –
(The copyist drew hearts that the author didn’t see – )

My heart is missing it’s 
Missing
It’s 

Smoke, pouring up from Ammit at Alexandria
Like a spring placed too 
Dry 
To breathe in rain again.

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Some things are best handled obliquely. They are the topics that make like a cat avoiding scritches; they are always just out of reach. They are never in the same location as any words that match their facts. They do not match up to any words because their facts have yet to match up to reality, which is to say, they have not yet happened. Any discussion before they have happened might hasten the happening. Any discussion after the fact will probably be pointless. Thus, a cavern forms. 

Well, that is dramatic. It is a small space, really; a small emptiness. It exists because things exist around it and nothing exists within it; that is all. It is more a sort of hole, but sealed at both ends; a jar. A canopic jar. It holds things that are, obviously, not inside because everything is perfectly fine and everyone really does have all their organs. In excellent condition. That’s what embalming does, you know. 

If a loved one had problems with their lungs, to the point where each conversation became more space for coughing than words, that is perhaps the sort of thing I would make a canopic jar of a metaphor for. When time came to pack away the knowledge of progressively shorter breath, I would seal it away beside the main experience of time with that person, as best I could. I would seal their lungs away, to prevent further mishap.

The intent of such acts is to sidestep time. Such a sealing cannot be maintained forever. The fate of all canopic jars is to be found, opened, or otherwise disturbed from stasis; their contents will be turned into questions. These questions will be sketched into the margins of a life, everything from life expectancy to personal beliefs, and – as with all such questions – any answers found will not be true to the reality of the pre-posthumous. Nothing can be true to one person’s life except the living thereof, start to finish. 

I think both are difficult. The start is certainly difficult, from what I’ve read. I am a person who feels faint at anything with the prefix “gyn-” so I really can’t say more on the subject of births. I talk about it only, in fact, to delay talking about the other portion of things, the opposite side of life from a birth. There’s not much to say there either, except in preparation for that of someone else I find myself missing small things rather than the sum of all that will go missing. 

Ironically for my purposes, the ancient Egyptians didn’t place the heart in its own canopic jar. It was left with the soul to be weighed against truth and (failing that) eaten by a crocodile-lion-hippo guardian named Ammit – a presumably confused, and confusing, lady. Which is grief, basically. In a nutshell, or crocodile hide. But at this time when acts of grieving feel completely untrue and pointless, all I can offer is a crocodile-snack of a heart. That’s the best exchange for the emptiness I now find, drawing notes in each margin of my life.

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*Takeaway: it’s not denial if there’s a metaphor! To which my dad brain points out: De Nile is a river in Egypt. See, now it all makes sense. (…) Anyhow, thanks for reading!

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