Oklahomaen Orphaen – Ron Arbuckle

April 3, 2026

If your wife was trapped in a creek, then you’d be out here too. Everyone keeps their distance. Whether it’s the ripped and worn canvas jacket or the raggedy beard, they all loop around. Keeping their distance. If your wife was trapped in a creek, you’d be staring into the water too. You’d be out here screaming into the waters. So still. Blaspheming Poseidon or Hades or whatever river nymph’s been contracted. To steal her away and lock her away. The stream would mock you too like it does me. The reflection you see wouldn’t be your own. You’d know better than to be fooled by light’s refraction, so simply bearing falsities.

They think I’m crazy. Because I pace along waters’ edge? Because I rake dried and cracked fingers manically through my matted, tangled hair? I’m not the one who’s crazy. My wife is trapped in a creek. They don’t understand me. Not fully at least. I’m nervous. Understandably. I keep my own distance to keep my own anxiety trapped within. No emotional transference needed. I keep it all my own. All my worries and fears. Mine and mine alone. I loop back around behind the walkers and the patrons of this fair park as I pace. I tip-toe on water’s edge so they can live their lives in indifference. But I will find her again, freeing her from her prison. I will set her free.

The pastor comes through here about once a week. Brings me a couple of bucks and something to eat. Tells me Jesus gets me. That he understands. That Jesus was fully human, knowing what it’s like to be fully man …but Jesus never got popcorn from the trashcan at the movie theater, just for the free refill …but Jesus never made-out late one night with a cute girl with braces in high school under a tree with snow-cones in hand …but Jesus never got to second base on the band bus coming back home from state …but Jesus never had to awkwardly buy condoms from a judgmental woman at the gas station in college after he and his girlfriend rushed in the first couple of times, irresponsibly unprotected …but Jesus never dreamt of growing old with the woman he loved …but Jesus never carried his daughter in his arms as she remarked at how strong he was …but Jesus never dodged patrolmen “protecting the peace” …but Jesus never lived with daily uncertainty about his role in his given time and place. At least not like I have. So tell me pastor, what does Jesus really know about being human? What does Jesus really know about being me?

I’m tired of living new lives. I’m tired of becoming new selves. Like a river you can never step in twice, always changing. Never settled. But I can see her blue eyes reflecting in waters so murky. Pools of blue, deep and unchanging. I can see her lips, like pillows I want to rest my head on after days so long. Longing for her to breathe past my ear and say words I long to hear once more, just once. Words that forever will linger inside my ears. Like a shark, I’ll stop swimming. Maybe if I do, I’ll find her again. Lyre in hand. Sink down deep. Stop breathing. Sink to Mariana’s Trench in the Stygian realm along River Styx. Make socks out of cinderblocks and descend in elegance to the deep dark place where I’ll find her again. With one fell swoop I’ll fend off Cerberus with ease of my impassioned pursuit. Trading apogee for concrete, concrete for sinking, sinking for perigee. Your light finds me, blinding. Face like Damascus Road conversion as I find long lost perihelion here in the stalagmitical abyss. Beckoning. Calling. Still sinking.

One day you’ll find me face down, floating. Joining her in tepid waters so calm. Where my drunkenness reminds me to leave no stone unturned. I don’t splash. I don’t flail. Calmly I work to flip every rock. Push past by the crawdads swimming backward in fear. Pardon myself as I slip past the adders and eels and crustaceous bug-like things. I’ll hold out my bright lantern like an angler fish, attracting my mate. I’ll find her down here, somewhere way down deep. I know she is here. She will be waiting for me. If you see me floating so gently, pick up a rock. Make it a nice one; big, strong and smooth. Walk up behind me, I won’t glance, struggle or resist. Smash it right here where my skull has grown soft, from forgetting to nourish myself in my quest. Feel the bone give way so freely as you put me at peace. End my journey at once in a single swift motion. It’s so easy, you’ll see. Drop the rock in the water where the prints will dissolve. Grab a crisp twenty from my wallet for your dutiful service and leave me to rest in lover’s embrace. They won’t know it was you. It’s the perfect crime. You won’t have to run or fret, just walk calmly away. Go about your business like nothing has happened, twenty dollars richer and knowing I’ve found her. Finally, I will have found her.

If your wife was trapped in a creek, then you’d be out here too. Screaming and pacing and looking deranged. But I will find her when the world dissolves into blackness at once and at once gone again. I will find her and be truly at rest. Leave me be. Go on now. I have much work to do. This creek has many stones, and the days aren’t as long as they once used to be. Don’t tug on my jacket, interrupting my trek. Stop bothering me, I cannot ever be stopped. Even if you cut my heart out with a jagged knife so precise, and replaced it with another, nothing would change. Though then, I might be different in unexpected ways. Because I’ve read memories are stored all along the body in unnatural manners. Not just in the brain, but deep in the tissue and sinews of organs so fleshy. There’s memories stored. Trauma buried. Desires hidden. Ask the other transplant patients. I’ve enough burdens of my own so please don’t, please don’t. I don’t need to shoulder any more memories from anyone else. From heart or from liver or from their smoke-blackened left lungs. My organs are fine, just failing in their own degenerative way.

I’m great at hiding in plain sight as my frame shrinks and condenses. Little by little, I’m wasting away. I’m folding in on myself in centripetal fashion. Because the best hiding place is in my own skin. The last place you’d think to look, today or tomorrow or anytime else. Because you know just how much I long to be free from this corporeal prison. I don’t need your help freeing my wife from this river-like prison. Deep coursing waters, unlike most shallow creeks. I can charter a boat with the little money I have. I’ll raise a few extra with a garage sale so moribund. Only sell trinkets and amulets and talismans cause that’s all I have. Sell em for dirt cheap because each of them’s cursed by the ghosts of your past. Just pass them off to another and never look back. Do me a favor, when I’ve set you free from your curses, curse the trees for me. They’ve tricked us into believing they worship the sky. When, in reality, they clutch to the earth craven and selfish, taking breath from our lungs and food from the dirt. Make them give it back and relinquish their grasp. Restore nature when man has found his peace once again.

A humble offering I will make here at water’s edge. Without casting or reeling or spinning in line, I give up myself if, but in spite of me, this stream will relinquish my wife. Set her free all at once. Let me see her even briefly then put me to rest, in flames off to Valhalla until my body freezes in arctic conditions. She’ll find me there, after she’s lived her best life. She’ll find me there, then she’ll put me at peace. After all that time, I’ll still be waiting. Hands grasped in final lover’s last gasp. Lie down beside me. Let it all fade, a little at first and then all at once quickly resolved. One last final sweet kiss. One last ragged deep breath. Close our eyes together. Find our soul’s rest.