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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “6 Feet Under” Down in the Dirt (v136) (the May 2016 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book A Stormy Beginning the Down in the Dirt Jan. - June 2016 collection book		get the 318 page Jan. - June 2016 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

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A Drowning Boy Visits the House of the Recent Dead

Steve Sibra

    Out of a sense of duty, once or twice a year, I return to the morgue.
    I walk along the light blue hallways with the dim glow pulling down to the floor like a crushing word of resignation.
    As I pass by, each of the corpses sits up on its slab. Gently I put them back down with my kisses.
    The most freshly dead are up on the rooftop, eating cold potatoes in the autumn wind.
    With my ethereal touch I try to give them reassurance; I try to bring them some sort of comfort or even acceptance, if not closure.
    Almost without fail, I fail.
    Some howl and throw themselves from the rooftops. I do not try to stop this.
    I could not do so even if I tried. I am of a spirit place now where they can only feel my touch if they desire to do so.
    I am a drowning boy and it seems that I have been drowning for years. Drowning in that bathtub with the big strong hairy arm holding my head under the flow of water, holding me submerged as I feel my lungs fill with liquid and my life slipping out from underneath me.
    I don’t know how long it really takes to drown but I have been doing it for years. I never breathe, my eyes are fixed on the blur of the water — and the power of the hand of my sister’s horrible boyfriend, that power is what I can feel. That and the water filling my lungs.
    The water filling my lungs is like someone trying to stuff a live badger into a burlap sack.
    My mind is filled with questions about my sister. Is she watching this? Is she trying to stop it? How does she feel later when she learns that this has happened?
    Will she stay with this brute?
    Is a sincere woman evil if she sincerely loves an evil man?
    Eventually my mind wanders back to the cold rooftop and the wailing of the recently dead, who throw themselves off the third story rooftop as if there is some finality to this act.
    Everything that is final has already happened. There has been a death. Your death. There is nothing more final than that.
    I try to get them to see it as a sort of freedom, as release, as escape. I never tell them what I am going through. I never show them the badger clawing and scraping as the burlap wall surrounds it and the river looms.
    I never tell them that there are worse things than death.
    Or that most if not all of the things that are worse than death involve being alive.
    I never tell them that drowning and drowning and drowning and never reaching the plateau of death; that is worse.
    I never tell them that the only thing worse than death is knowing that death exists and knowing that you will never be able to actually achieve it.

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