Lawns
by Tara Isabel Zambrano
Since his wife left him, my neighbor, a scientist, mows his lawn at midnight. The noise makes my head throb. One night, I walk up to his house. He stops the mower, sits on the front steps. Self-loathing teems from him. I pause before I walk back. I hear him cry.
⦿
There is a bird on my patio, struggling to stand. It makes me think of the scientist, his head bent over manuals in his lab, his neck sore when he straightens. Later in the day, from my second-floor bedroom, I watch him by the pool. At this hour, the light leans its back against the slanted roof. I go around his yard. White plastic bags from the supermarket, bottles of wine in his patio. I sit with him. He looks at me, some sort of awareness and embarrassment in his eyes and a brief flare of anger. I should have done something to stop her, he says. I hold his hand. The water ripples our silhouettes. A lone cloud in the sky splits the sun.
⦿
I stop by the scientist’s home again after a night of drinking. He opens the door, his hair disheveled as if he has just walked out of his lab after several failed experiments. When I kiss him, he hesitates for a moment, then kisses back, leads me to a guest room. He says the bedroom is reserved for his wife. Later, drunk and roped in cigarette smoke, he claims his wife’s stuff takes up all the space in his house. We dig a large hole next to the pool, bury her name and her belongings.
⦿
From my upstairs room, I can see the mound of dirt in the scientist’s backyard. A shoot of grass on it. I avoid meeting him as if coming to terms with a loss. He leaves messages on my phone, When will I see you? My mailbox looks like a dragon with red, yellow, paper wings taped to it, calling my name, the letters from I need you curling like distilled compounds in a chemical reaction. His misery ruffles in the cicada-clogged air, shimmering blue, if looked on intently.
⦿
The next time I’m with him, he asks how I coped after my husband left me for another woman. I pull the sheets up to my chin. He flicks with the edges of my hair, his toes wiggle on my legs. Your ceiling needs another coat of paint, I say, the words weighing down the edges of my lips. The afternoon sun oils our bodies. We shower together, his big hand rubbing soap on my shoulders, washing the foam like a discarded memory. Later, at night, from my second-floor bedroom, I see him digging in his backyard, pulling out pieces of clothing, smelling them, holding close.
For hours, I sit on the edge of my bed. I remember the night my husband left, I fell through emptiness. Void became our parting song. I want to believe there’s more to this life than loving and losing. There’s more than just longing.
⦿
The scientist’s house is dark. The night is pure with no stars. The mower is outside his garage. I turn it on, go around his house several times, until the machine sputters turning the grass to ground, until the space around me is iridescent green. Until he’s out, sitting on the steps, watching, as if saying, If we don’t ache for those who’ve left us, what then can we give?
Tara Isabel Zambrano is the author of Death, Desire And Other Destinations, a full-length flash collection by OKAY Donkey Press. Her work has won the first prize in The Southampton Review Short Short Fiction Contest 2019, been a Finalist in Bat City Review 2018 Short Prose Contest and Mid-American Review Fineline 2018 Contest, been published in The Best Small Fictions 2019, The Best Micro Fiction 2019, 2020 Anthology. She lives in Texas and is the Fiction Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal.
