Max Porter - Grief is the Thing with Feathers

We all used to get a lot of trouble from Mum for flecking the mirror with toothpaste.

For a few years we flecked and spat and over-brushed and our mirror was a white-speckled mess and we all took guilty pleasure in it.

One day Dad cleaned the mirror and we all agreed it was excellent.

Various other things slipped. We pissed on the seat. We never shut drawers. We did these things to miss her, to keep wanting her.

Oil, when you look closer mud, when you look closer sand, when you sip it, silt becoming silk.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

Eugh, said Crow, you sound like a fridge magnet.

In the long grass I discover flattened paths, maybe my brother’s, so I whisper, ‘Bro, are you in here?’ and passing adults see us, three feet apart, but we are in cathedrals, infinite, vast.

Crow giggles. ‘I’m in here, can’t see me, I’m greeeen!’

I said to my best friend, She would be cross with me for staying the extra day for the end-of-term football party, because we’ll hit all the holiday traffic. My friend said, You have to stop thinking this way, involving her. There’s grief and there’s impractical obsession.

I was impractically obsessed with her before, I said. Are you seeing anyone? he said. To talk things through?

I am, I said.

Are they good?

Very good.

I almost laughed, at the thought of Crow in a study, Crow pecking out an invoice, Crow recommended by a GP, or available on the NHS. Crow pondering Winnicott, with a shake of the head, but grudgingly liking Klein.

Yes, I said to my best friend. You don’t need to worry, I am being helped.

Around the time Mum died there was a hurricane and a lot of trees fell down. In the beech woods near our Gran’s house there were a great many half-fallen trees, resting diagonally on the ones left standing.

I climbed up, and up, until my weight made the fallen tree slip and I would come crashing down. Sometimes into soft cushioned cradles of greenery, sometimes into nests of sharp branches. My brother would yell DEAD MEAT!

I can’t remember if this game was my brother’s idea, or Crow’s.

Dad came to get us in the woods at dusk and said, ‘You’re bleeding. Fucking hell, your whole body is bleeding.’ I was numb from the cold and the scratches were tingling and Dad told my brother to have a serious think about his behaviour.

This one is true:

Once upon a time there was a demon who fed on grief. The delicious aroma of raw shock and unexpected loss came wafting from the doors and windows of a widower’s sad home.

Therefore the demon set about finding his way in.

One evening the babes were freshly washed and the husband was telling them tales when there was a knock on the door.

Rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Open up, open up, it’s me from 56. It’s … Keith. Keith Coleridge. I need to borrow some milk.’

But the sensible father knew there was no number 56 on the quiet little street, so he did not open the door.

The next night the demon tried again.

Rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Open up, open up, I’m from Parenthesis Press. It’s Paul. Paul … Graves. I heard the news. I’m truly gutted it’s taken me this long to come over. I’ve brought a pizza and some toys for the boys.’

But the attentive father knew there had been a Pete from Parenthesis and a Phil from Parenthesis, but never a Paul from Parenthesis, so he did not open the door.

The next night the demon ran at the door, flashing blue and crackling.

Rat-a-tat-tat. BANG. BANG. ‘Open up! Police! We know you’re in there, this is an emergency, you have five seconds to open the door or we will smash our way in.’

But the worldly grieving man knew a bit about the law and sensed a lie.

The demon went away and wondered what to do next. He was tabloid-despicable, so a powerful plan came to him.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Knock. Knock. Knock. ‘Boys? It’s me. It’s Mum. Darling? Are you there? Boys, open the door, it’s me. I’m back. Sweetheart? Boys? Let me in.’

And the babes flung their duvets back in abandon, swung their little legs over the edge of the bed and scampered down the stairs. The chambers of their baffled baby hearts filled with yearning and they tingled, they bounded down towards before, before, before all this. The father, drunk on the voice of his beloved, raced down after them. The sound of her voice was stinging, like a moon-dragged starvation surging into every hopeless raw vacant pore, undoing, exquisite undoing.

‘We are coming, Mum!’

Their friend and houseguest, who was a crow, stopped them at the door.

My loves, he said.

My dear, sorry loves. It isn’t her. Go back to bed and let me deal with this. It isn’t her.

The boys floated their crumpled crêpe-paper dad back up, one under each arm steering his weightlessness, and they laid him down to sleep. Then they sat at the window looking down and watching what happened and they liked it very much, for boys will be boys.

Crow went out, smiled, sniffed the air, nodded good evening and back-kicked the door shut behind him. Then Crow demonstrated to the demon what happens when a crow repels an intruder to the nest, if there are babies in that nest:

One loud KRONK, a hop, a tap on the floor, a little distracted dance, a HONK, swivel and lift, as a discus swung up but not released but driven down atomically fixed and explosive, the beak hurled down hammer-hard into the demon’s skull with a crack and a spurt then smashed onwards down through bone, brain, fluid and membrane, into squirting spine, vertebra snap, vertebra crunch, vertebra nibbled and spat and one-two-three-four-five all the way down quick as a piranha, nipping, cutting, disassembling the material of the demon, splashing in blood and spinal gunk and shit and piss, unravelling innards, whipping ligaments and nerves about joyous spaghetti tangled wool hammering, clawing, ripping, snipping, slurping, burping, frankly loving the journey of hurting, hurting-hurting and for Crow it was like a lovely bin full of chip papers and ice cream and currywurst and baby robins and every nasty treat, physically invigorating like a westerly above the moor, like a bouncy castle elm in the wind, like old family pleasures of the deep species. And Crow stands thrilled in a pool of filth, patiently sweeping and toeing remains of demon into a drain-hole.

His work done, Crow struts and leaps up and down the street issuing warnings while the pyjama-clad boys clap and cheer — behind-glass-silent — from the bedroom window. Crow issues warnings to the wide city, warnings in verse, warnings in many languages, warnings with bleeding edges, warnings with humour, warnings with dance and sub-low threats and voodoo and puns and spectacular ancient ugliness.

Satisfied with his defence of the nest, Crow wanders in to find some food.

Such a bad joke, bad dream, bad poem, so different, this cr

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e ak, ik e y, evice, ea tor.

Cr

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y

ying

He was young and good and sometimes funny. He was silent then he was livid then he was spiteful and unfamiliar, then he became obsessed and had visions and wrote and wrote and wrote.