Buried Deep

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