Can I tell you a secret?

a story as short as a long, deep breath

“Caged” by Kremena Chipilova

Can I tell you a secret, I ask him, and he turns around. In the darkness, his head appears to float midair, the slivers of his half-open eyes searching for me. I find his hand under the sheets and squeeze. I think I’ve known for a long time, I say, my words a register above whisper. He leans closer.

You know, I go on, like the way you always knew you were an artist, and that’s what you were made to do. I know it’s not the same thing, not even close probably, but I just know it in the same way. All it took was coming here, and meeting that crazy neighbor, who, as it turns out, isn’t that crazy after all. I wish I’d thanked you sooner, for moving us, I mean to say, for moving here, like for moving, oh God, my words are coming out wrong, I’m too excited. Feel!

I bring his hand to my chest, and a tremor goes up his fingers, so quick I don’t think even he’s noticed, but I have, I’m noticing it right now, every drop of blood in his veins is a singing bird. I wipe sweat from the back of my neck and try to just focus on his hand on my chest, so cold and rough. I can still feel the blue acrylic paint that splashed the space between his forefinger and thumb that morning after we had another fight, this time because there weren’t any eggs despite my having asked him to bring them. But that was before I knew.

I mean, I always knew, like I’m trying to explain to him now, but I mean knowing in the way of conscious knowing, I guess. I consciously only knew after I got back home from next door with the one blue what I thought was a duck egg like a perfectly polished sea stone in my palms. I went to the kitchen sink and set it inside, letting the water wash over its speckled, oval body. I stared at it for so long I didn’t realize when the sun went down and everything was dark.

He’s moved his hands to my left breast now, squeezing over my t-shirt and trying to wriggle inside through the neckline. I wonder if he’s even been awake this whole time. I really need you to hear this, I tell him, and curl my shoulders inside to nudge him away. His hand flops between us like a dead fish. His breathing grows lighter, and his eyes are almost fully open.

Outside, night is giving up. I turn over on my back, dragging his arm with me to rest on my stomach. I’m going to tell you now, but you need to promise you won’t run away. He raises himself on his elbow and I look through the triangle created by his arm at the egg I kept next to the bed after he’d already fallen asleep.

I think about the egg as an another planet, with waves inside it, the yolk a bloody sun, and inside the yolk a yellow sea filled with boats made of leaves, of the women that inhabit that world, long twisting hair braided down their back shimmering like eels below the water, and the water around us, in the room, bursting from the egg, but also the walls, the oak floors, the earth outside, with the worms and the bones buried underground long ago. What have you done, he says, clutching my body like a child. Above us, the ceiling begins to crack and I feel my body fill with light and float.

Notes on Art

I paired this story with Kremena Chipilova’s “Caged”¹ because it captures that strange, heavy tension between being held and being trapped.

In the painting, the hand can be viewed as the cage, yes, but you see that it’s also adorned with rings and fine nails, suggesting a kind of “beautiful” or “domesticated” restraint. I love the surreal touch of what appears as the bird having a human finger for one leg.

To me, it mirrored a moment in my story where the boundaries between the protagonist’s physical body and her internal world start to blur. I’d like to think that both the painting and the story are about that exact second when the “conscious knowing” finally breaks through or beyond the surface.

1. Image: Caged by Kremena Chipilova. © Kremena Chipilova. Used for editorial commentary purposes only. All rights reserved.