BANGLE MAG - Magazine - Page 34
UNSEASONALITY
by CT Allen
A scrawny, muted squirrel arrives on the tired wicker chair outside my rented writing shed
and begins snacking on the sheepskin slung across the seat. The sheepskin lives there and
has never made it inside, as far as I can remember. It strikes me the squirrel has only just
discovered it’s good for insulation, otherwise there’d be none left by now. I try to picture how
it would regurgitate the 昀氀u昀昀 when it gets home, but it’s hard to imagine this or any process
backwards when you are crying hard. Tears disable the creative part of my brain, which is why
it’s good to get them out 昀椀rst thing.
I want it to notice me, but I don’t want to scare it o昀昀. When I move to the window–a Perspex
panel with a gap at the top where it has slipped in its frame - to take the inevitable round of
photos and videos for sharing online later, it doesn’t scurry o昀昀. It checks I’m not coming any
closer and repositions to a spot where it can vault in a hurry if I become too much of a threat,
then chews more. Noticed, at least, I stop crying. Squirrels disable the sad part of my brain, it
seems. Then, after a moment, a new sadness sinks over me, starting with a thought. How often
sadness starts with a thought.
‘It’s April,’ I say low, knowing the animal won’t understand but needing to let the words out.
It can’t read the seasons anymore. People shrug o昀昀 pattern change in the weather, squirrels
can’t do the same. ‘Don’t waste time on nesting. You need food,’ I tell it but it mistakes me for a
hunter and bounds o昀昀.
An unseasonally warm spell the week before would have been the perfect trick from a hostile
world, drunk on man-made poisons and feeling mischievous. The squirrel’s 昀氀ickering tail had
昀椀rst suggested dexterity, but now I see re昀氀exes, not choices. It’s dopey and weak, not sure what
it should be doing, like when you wake from a nap that has gone on longer than intended, but
it’s too early to call it a night. Not like that, though. The opposite. When you’ve dragged your
sleep-deprived carcass around all day for your dependent toddler and when your head hits the
pillow, the same child is awake, vomiting, crying and needing you again milliseconds later. You
have to keep acting on your instincts; keep the child safe, keep the nest warm.
Remorse from our intoxicated planet arrived in a sharp, embarrassed return to overnight frosts.
The earth can’t unwake the wildlife it forced out of hibernation, never mind providing for the
creatures that rely on the delayed high energy food of young buds for survival. The best we can
hope is that the earth uses its early-dying plants and rigid corpses of critters to feed itself, to
nourish its soil and come back stronger next year, if not next season.
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