Swirling Mud Thicker than Smoke

by Tommy Dean

Mishaal Zahed

I’ve run out of places to put my wet clothes on those nights I visit the river. They’ve done something to the current. Your death has become political. A warning, but also a chance for people to nod solemnly on TV. They’ve promised no future deaths. Can you imagine making that promise? Sand bars rising from the slow trickle of water are littered with fish carcasses. Trash continues to wedge against the rocks and broken tree limbs. I stand in the middle of the river, feet bare, shirt tucked into my shorts, the hairs on my knees glistening from stomping from puddle to puddle, followed by the silent gliding minnows, bewildered by the lack of water.

When you jumped, did you see the bottom, fish darting through swirling mud thicker than smoke? Was there a flick of thought about possibly surviving, a hope for some unnatural intervention? A sink whole populated by mermaids or a lost city made from dinosaur bones?

I stand underneath the bridge, marveling at the cracks and warping of the wooden slants. In math class our teacher tells us that the difference between height and length is merely perspective, an inducement of the imagination, a trick of the eye. While in History we learn that meaning only comes from documentation, that belief is tangible.

When I ask them to apply these theories to my life, what I mean is your life, but in absentia, because let’s face it, you’re not here to suffer through the maze of feeling that you’ve created. How, I wonder, do I document that? They tell me about Hamilton, or Pythagoras or Oprah. They tell me about FDR and polio, and about World Wars, and quadratic formulas.

They hint at the human genome, and the cracked spirals of humanness like I’m not already alive, not living in the eddies of your choices. These theories, these facts, feel like darts when all I’m asking for is a paddle or maybe a map.

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Tommy Dean lives in Indiana with his wife and two children. He is the author of a flash fiction chapbook entitled Special Like the People on TV from Redbird Chapbooks. He is the editor at Fractured Lit. He has been previously published in New World Writing, The MacGuffin, The Lascaux Review, New Flash Fiction Review, and Pithead Chapel. His stories have been included in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020. Find him @TommyDeanWriter on Twitter.