Guernica Magazine

Buried Deep

As we muddle through the unknown, the urge to tell secrets has only grown.
Green-Wood Cemetery. Photo: Michela Simoncini

A decade or so ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, a mystic advised me on how to rid myself of my then-boyfriend’s ex. If I wrote her name on a slip of paper, folded it tightly, and stuffed the paper into the rear of my freezer, she would harden like an icicle and slip out of my life and thoughts. I can see now that what I perceived as her haunting the edges of our relationship mostly consisted of the fact that, really, I wanted to be her friend. (I had known her before I met him, and she was a very cool woman.) But at the time, freezing her felt cathartic. I liked the contrast of it: a silly anxiety demoted to sit amid the ice creams and cubes and bags of frozen fruit and the frayed icicles that crept in at the bottom edge where the freezer sealing had gotten old. After I did it, I rarely thought of her anymore.

That action feels too naïve to connect with present circumstances: pandemic, political crises, mounting

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Guernica Magazine

Guernica Magazine19 min read
On Beauty and Violence
As a child, violence was a geography I could visualize: a slab of earth in the Minnesotan suburbs, with a rock garden and two pink azaleas, a geography from which I could flee. It spanned to the neighbor’s forked metal fence, whose sharp black tines
Guernica Magazine13 min read
The Jaws of Life
To begin again the story: Tawny had been unzipping Carson LaFell’s fly and preparing to fit her head between his stomach and the steering wheel when the big red fire engine came rising over the fogged curve of the earth. I saw it but couldn’t say any
Guernica Magazine10 min read
Black Wing Dragging Across the Sand
The next to be born was quite small, about the size of a sweet potato. The midwife said nothing to the mother at first but, upon leaving the room, warned her that the girl might not survive. No one seemed particularly concerned; after all, if she liv

Related