An Oasis
I saw the deer in December on a drizzly afternoon following a storm.
I was stumbling down our driveway, pushing a wheelbarrow filled with a 50 pound bag of Quikrete sand, of which I had yet to start shoveling out as I wanted to maintain our lack of access to the main road for as long as possible.
We felt separate from the world. I felt safe from it.
I reached our two mailboxes at the fork of our drive. A fork with two tines.
The tine on the right had its red flag upright - it had a letter he had written to Santa.
And I wouldn’t know its contents until a week or two later. But when mails’ addressed to “The North Pole” it's just returned to sender. It doesn’t get to leave.
The tine on the left had the boulder - the one she hated. The one she always worried about hitting when getting back home from work.
The one I loved.
I crossed our street and walked into our cemetery.
Passing by the Bartlett stone, by Gruen, Cooke, Parker, Frost.
All the unattended to ones. The ones I used as my closest confidants.
And it was when I got to the Shaw grave that I saw the pair of hooves. The ones wrapped around the stone.
When I got closer I saw they were limp, and on the other side of the stone, the deer was dead, covered in ticks. Bulbous, gray ticks. Especially his eyelids - which were still open.
And I wanted them closed. I wanted them to be in harmony with the buried lids.
I wanted to be the only seer.
I gently dragged each membrane down; brushed off a tick that tried to latch onto me; and I pet his neck - I pet his neck right where his hair was the most white.
Then clumps of it came out.
I started looking at my hand - really staring at it. Seeing how some of the hair warped the creases of my palm. Like they were connecting new lines. Like they were reconstructing my fate.
I pet the deer one more time, I rubbed both my hands together, and I went back to our house.
When I reached the front door I yelled for him, and he ran outside.
There I was, on the doorstep, hands up by my face, eyes agape.
He asked if I was okay; I told him “look closer” as I put my hands down to my waist, down to his eyes.
He saw the hair and looked confused.
You just missed it! I told him. I was sitting on our front lawn right here (I pointed to a spot five feet away from us; as a wad of the dead hair left my hand, and drifted down to the wet grass).
And then out of the corner of my eye I see a huge, white buck slowly trot along the perimeter of our yard.
His eyes became as agape as mine were a minute ago.
We made eye contact and the buck stopped right in his tracks. But he didn’t react like a normal deer. He didn’t race off. He could tell I was an old soul. He could see how powerful I was. And I saw it in him too. We recognized each other. I got up from our lawn and I slowly approached him. Carefully at first. But I realized he wasn’t going to run. So my approach became more relaxed, and I eventually got within arm’s-length right as he bowed his head for me, offering me the chance to pet him. I ran my hand all the way from the bridge of his nose to the set of his tail. And his pelt was wet, that’s why I have so much hair on my hands. He let me pet him maybe like five or six times and then slowly trotted away.
It was from another lifetime ago.
He looked at me in awe. He believed me without any hesitation. He asked no questions.
I exhaled deeply, and I felt beholden to him.
When my mind was an abyss, I could use his as an oasis.
An oasis where I could house all my fears.
An oasis where I could put my lies to rest.
An oasis that never needed to know it had access to sand.