wildscape. literary journal

Field Notes from Early Grief
by Angela Mitsuma

On the Aftermath 

I’d never known a chosen like that before.

Grief moves throughout my body—predictable tides that I’ve charted on pages and texts. Every high shows me a glimpse of the sun. Every low brings me to the ocean floor.

It will get better, the ocean whispers as it tosses me.

Bubbles, fish, and seaweed move with ease. I am not a pioneer of these depths. So I fight against the current with a life preserver of encouraging words and a Dominican rosary around my neck.

Then the low comes again.

I am a compass without a needle.
I am seasick.


On Reduction

I am reduced to sensation.

The blanket weighs on my back, the pillow holds my cheek, the cushion presses up against my belly. Together they contain my body as it tries to spill into the past and the hypothetical.

(“No one is ever told what would have happened.”)

God does not exist in imagined realities. Perhaps that is why mine are empty.

Light is too much. Options are too much. I am narrowed down to the size of a mustard seed. A mustard seed is all you get, but it’s all you need, right?

Give us this day our daily bread.

I hunger, but I cannot eat. Food enters my mouth. I mash and chew until it dissolves, only to find it again in the fridge the next day.

Everything is for another day.


On Bread, Wine, and Containment

Everything is amplified.

Have faith. Be the mustard seed.

Here is your daily bread in the form of a triangle. It is warm, like your friends, like their hands around each other and their bodies pressed together.

Take and eat.

A glass of wine sits in front of me. Dark and thick; I cannot see through it.

Take and drink.

I sit on the bathroom floor with my head in my hands.

Peace be with you.

Pieces I am.

In the aftermath, there are two of us. The lights are dim and the TV is off. She rearranges the sectional so I can stay overnight. Its cushions surround me. I hold a weighted stuffed animal to my chest and wrap a blanket around my body.

I am small.
I am contained.

I think I can see color again.


On Open Hands

I awake with my chest constricted and my eyes closed against the blue-gray light of the sunrise.

Mornings are not for joy. They’re for arms wrapped around myself, inhale for four and exhale for six, remember: it’s just cortisol, shrink the timeframe, next ten minutes not next ten hours, start moving and it will stop.

In those hours before my alarm, it feels like it will never stop.

I walk, drive, walk again, sit in my chair and take a breath. Pictures of my friends and family sit above my desk where I cannot reach. I don’t know where joy is. Is it something that comes to me like Jesus on the water or is it something I must approach carefully with bare feet?

My happy pill sits in my left palm.
My right emerges from underneath to bring it to my mouth.

Amen.

I grasp the cup and swallow.

Amen.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

Am I a teacher or a second grader in a white dress?


On Grading the Evaluator

Course: Love and Longing 401-203
Final Assignment: Recognize the Beloved
Student: The One Who Asked for Her 99th Percentile
Final Grade: Incomplete

Course comments:
●	Prematurely describes her life as “empty.”
●	Attempts to reduce her to a singular strength and limits analysis to her visible output. Reductively labels her output as “pattern recognition.”
●	Confuses his metric of fullness—i.e. output, ambition, productivity—with a universal standard; neglects to consider other perspectives—e.g. emotional attunement, steadiness, relational intelligence.
●	Interrogates the Beloved rather than engaging her in curious conversation. Submission is evaluative rather than exploratory.
●	Thesis states desire for family and further research whereas conclusion disagrees, leading to an inconsistent narrative.

Recommendation:
Re-enroll after taking prerequisite course: The Life of the Beloved. This course teaches students how to find fulfillment in stillness, skills for viewing lives through the eyes of God rather than output, and serves as an introduction to Intrinsic Value.


From Inside the Storm

My eyes sense the sunlight without opening. I hear a creaking sound and for a moment, I am eight-years-old and my grandma is coming up the stairs to tell me breakfast is ready. It is Sunday, my family is in the living room, and the TV is playing the news while eggs and bacon wait for me in the kitchen.

Then I open my eyes.

It is not Sunday and there is no family here. Half my family I cannot reach. The other half was a promise ripped away like the air from my lungs and I cannot catch a breath. I breathe in and out and in and out but nothing stays. I exhale every time.

The sky is one gray sheet. I cannot number the clouds by wisdom.

Even so, my lungs demand an answer.

Why?
Where?
How?

I have the hunger of five thousand.

The blanket weighs on my stomach. I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze. My palms face the sky but the hunger is still there.

I’ve never known an abandoned like this before.

In my chest lies an anchor. It keeps me in place as my body sinks into the bed. Why should I move? I don’t. I stay. Until I must move, so I pick up my anchor and take it with me.

The anchor is heavy and I am scared to fall.

But even Jesus had a weight to carry.

Even Jesus fell.

Even Jesus had Simon.

about the author // Angela Mitsuma