Since Jon stopped answering his door I’m digging to his house. I started a year ago. Soon after, we started up again as less than partners. Now there’s nothing where that less was. He said I’m intense. Digging is less intense than stalking, which I did first. I stopped because what could I do if he was going out to meet a woman, to stop him and not make it worse. To stop him following what wouldn’t move the earth to follow him. I’m staving off non-deepening between us. Non-deepening between two people is a lull like death where you forget the years pass. There’s a lull which is the opposite where you forget the seconds. The earth takes all time to beat itself to pulp as water does in seconds. I sack the earth between me and Jon. I push myself toward Jon in the clump-black air. When he lets me let him push inside my head and body, I circle the live time those seconds try at.
If you order $358 worth of gallon buckets and a shovel from Home Depot, they make you sign for it. I spend more than twice this every month on takeout since my kitchen’s holed. I feel very good. There are weeks I inch stone flakes off clay. There are afternoons that I heap grainy thin wet loam into those buckets, mud a rubbling wall everywhere crusting my elbows. If you hire a jacked man named Andrey on TaskRabbit to haul all the earth that $358 worth of gallon buckets can hold in a bird-shitted Kia Carnival with the seats ripped out, if you tell him to dump this in the dump south of the city once a month, he’ll make you sign for nothing. San Francisco is small. Jon lives exactly 15 minutes from my kitchen, walking. That’s half a mile as the crow flies. That’s one year as I dig. There’s often a pipe or metal-tough rock or hairy wire and then I have to level the whole tunnel under it. I’ve gouged five feet closer to the earth’s metal-boiling heart for every inch’s trouble of Pacific Gas & Electric.
In college one Halloween I went as Michael Myers and I kept the overalls. The denim hardens on me as I dig. When it chafes me it stays in my bathtub overnight. The dry white of my tub is brown. If you need a phone in San Francisco, get AT&T. The internet is awful except for fiber- optic cables, which lie so shallow I’ve lopped none, but the reception is so great that, this low, Google Maps tells me exactly how close I am to Jon. The worst is when I call it for the night, crawling those buckets back, two at a time, scrunched like a mole-mule. Google Maps tells me I’m in his house tonight. I’m below what he’s inside. I feel very good. He lives on a very busy street but I hear nothing. I’m not breathing. I’m pushing in, up. I feel weak little rocks pelt my face and I hear no breathing. I shower myself dry but I’ve tanned gray from the dirt, and my hair is usually matted. Jon has these beautiful yellow hardwood floors. I wonder what he’ll think, the shovel-tap-rap-wap below his floors, then my dry face hacking out.
The first thing I’ll say, other than that I’ll pay to replace the floor every night he’ll let me shard it again, is I want him to marry me. We know the earth as something we move over or else must be moved. All marriage means to me is something the earth must move for. My overalls have many pockets designed ostensibly for Michael Myers’ many tools like shivs, shanks, steak knives, hammers, phone cords, and syringes. I only have, in this little pocket in a big one on my inner thigh, a silver band. I found it avoiding a pipe. I don’t think he’ll take it. But some part of Jon must be some ashamed thing that wants me unashamedly or else why’d he let me let him back into my head and body.
Jon’s living room is off the street. I’ll rake until our floor is boiling metal. I’m imagining the shocked shape of his eyes when I split his floor. He never leaves on Sunday nights. He’s watching TV above me now. He’s clipped his toenails and is likely snoring. I’ve woken to his snoring, not known the time, then known. I’m later than usual tonight. I made Andrey dump my buckets and bring them back by dawn. I’m done with him. I tipped him with another ring I found. I filled the buckets with tub-water. I hunch-walked them here, from my kitchen, two by two, over the boiling heart of the earth below Jon. It took half the night. I feel very good. I poured everything out. I poured water all along into the muddy hacked hole here, so if Jon doesn’t take my ring, I’ll slip down this wet loop that’ll slip me back. I’ll hurt the earth into ring that always leads toward him. I’ll slip into a hole with no surface or edge or no a but a yesless opening forever.
~ Selen Ozturk
