flowers on sewer lids

On a walk with Death, I decide to visit my spot. I have never taken anyone there; it is not a pleasant venture, and Death and I weave our way through the greenery, shoelace tangles with roots and overgrowth. But I know my way well. My shoes have kissed these grounds, waltzed with this earth enough times that I live comfortably knowing I will never rival this romance. Death does not struggle to keep up.

We arrive with scratched legs and less breath than we remember starting with. I sit myself on the raised lid of a sewer–a humble seat for an arrogant mind–while Death situates and settles into the weeds below. And so we sit. The surrounding trees (the ones that conceal us away from all else) sway casually, and Death hums them a tune that sounds like an old song I once knew about Persephone. It is very possible that Time refused to pass in that moment, deciding instead to let Death’s haunting melody lay it to sleep.

As the song draws to a satisfying close, Death stands, and it is only now that the waning sunlight captures my notice. I close my eyes. Death looks at me expectantly as I too rise. I pluck a dead flower, then a living one, both of which I set gingerly at the center of the sewer lid. Momentarily, I close my eyes once more.

Death has waited for me to finish, and I notice the expectant stare turn curious. I, knowing exactly the source of confusion, begin to explain myself.

“After each visit, I leave nearby flowers out as an offering to whatever gods may exist,” I hear myself say, though I do not remember allowing this act of vulnerability. “I know that the flowers I select are mainly weeds, but I think they’re beautiful, truly! Dead and living alike! And by offering them up to the gods, I anchor myself down on the earth, where I am meant to be. I remind myself of my own mortality. It’s ritualistic, really.”

For the first time in my presence, Death opens its mouth to speak.

“You are smart enough to know that gods of this type do not exist.”

Death’s voice is low and smooth and I think of a song I know about Achilles.

“Maybe so,” I reply, “but I need some sort of supplement regardless. I work long hours, you know, and all I want to do when I return home is lay my head to rest. But even still, I come here. Do you know why?”

Death does not answer. I proceed.

“Because it’s so easy to get lost in that apathy. Especially for intelligent people, as you claim me to be. I need something to keep me from sinking into my own mind. And this is it.”

Death and I begin our walk back from my spot, the dimming sun casting ethereal light onto our figures, and I break the silence once again as I continue.

“I really do think that intellect is the downfall of the intellectual. Intelligence drowns the soul. Think of a flower being dropped into a bowl of water,” I propose. I am no longer talking with Death individually now; I have opened my ideas up to the universe, and I speak to it thus. “The flower sinks into the water, the very thing that gives it life, and it is a magnificent, beautiful, poetic scene. That is, until you realize that the flower will not realize that it is suffocating until it is far too late. The damage of the water has already begun and it is permanently harmful, irreversible. That’s what cleverness does to us mortals; it tricks us into fatal submersion.”

There is a pause. A gentle one.

“But humans have something that flowers do not,” I add, not as an afterthought, but as a tender suggestion. “We have arms,” I say. “We have legs,” I remind. “We have the ability to push and pull ourselves out of the water, out of this intelligence that we have lost ourselves in. But first, we must recognize that we are in it to begin with and then find it within ourselves to leave. This is where we fail.’

I’m not completely convinced that Death is making any sense of what I’m saying. How could it? After all, Death is not any more human than Time or Space, so I’m sure that my gripes regarding mortality and humanity fall on deaf ears. Besides, who knows more about death than Death itself? I am preaching to the choir. I feel my relief viscerally when Death speaks again.

“What about yourself, then? Is the air around you becoming the very water you speak of? Will you pull yourself out?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Flowers on sewer lids, naturally.”

…

“Good choice.”

“Wrought-iron garden gate, 19 Church Street, Charleston, SC” by Spencer Means is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.