Did you know that the common housefly, like the one circling the room now in a wide, counter-clockwise circuit, hums in the key of F? It’s true. They come in different sizes, of course, but their bodies scale so that the vibrations of their wings correlate to the pitch intervals in F major: F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E. The octave above. Their wings are made for this.
I didn’t know that back in 2015. There was so much I didn’t know. That summer, I didn’t know that you only had one year left to live. We stood beside each other in the tiny kitchen and prepared a dinner of rice and melted cheese, your favorite, as it reminded you of childhood, a rare pleasure from that time, and it helped ease the nausea from the row of pills you’d laid out on the table.
We told each other that we were living with cancer. That this was possible. The monsoon rains poured from the sky as thunder rolled over the peninsula from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Seaboard. We’d rented a cottage on our favorite beach, with sliding-glass doors opening onto a sandy path that wound through iceplant dunes and soon gave way to tufts of sea oats and, fifty meters out, the salt of the tide curling into the boom of the surf.
I drank from a bottle of coconut rum. The rum added a sugary sizzle to our lips when we kissed. I can feel the tips of my fingers at the small of your back even now. Your hair brushing the side of my cheek. The fragrance of your hair after floating in the warm waters of the gulf, hour after hour, earlier in the day. The salt of the ocean on your skin.
There were days like this. Whole afternoons lived in suspension. Floating. Ruin stalled-out and gliding on its own silence, somewhere off in the distance.
The housefly circles past and I’ve returned to another unlivable year, 2020, with this fly humming in B-flat as I stare out the kitchen window. Its flight-path is reminiscent of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and the note thrumming in the fly’s wings has a bittersweet timbre to it. Vivaldi, I think. The Four Seasons. It was composed with the sound of flies written into a figuration of notes, in F major, maybe the only time flies have appeared in classical music. And this housefly, so singular in its hypnotic focus, banks around me as though trying to spin me backwards in time.
But that earlier fly, the one on the coast in our little love-nest on the ocean—that fly was drunk on the moment. Its wings hummed along to “The Girl from Ipanema” as it swooned its way through the damp ocean air, dizzy with circling two lovers who circled each other. With a lifespan of only fourteen days, it swam drunkenly around us as we danced in the kitchen and laughed, the thunder rolling over and past and on toward some day we hadn’t landed in yet. Each grain of rice expanded with water as the heating element began to glow on the stove. Tree frogs sang to the storm outside. Inside, the two of us were multiplied in that fly’s vision, as the common housefly has between 3,000 to 6,000 simple eyes that comprise each of their two complex eyes. So many versions of us walked barefoot through the doors and into the rain. Kissing each other. Dancing. Laughing. And that fly’s tiny yet intricate brain gathered in each and every one of us. However incomplete. However fragmented. This a definition of love on planet Earth.
The fly would have these memories to think back on days later, when we packed up and drove home. That’s when the fly, resting on the windowsill, stared at the blue-green swells of the ocean rolling in, the sound of it muffled by panes of glass. The muscles in its legs slumped forward, then gave out. And maybe that’s when the fly remembered you saying that—as a young girl—you’d seen horses in the curling salt of the wave when it crashed, galloping toward shore. Uncountable horses. And when the fly looks for them, it’s true, there they are—with manes of salt pulled back by the wind, the horses shoulder to shoulder, galloping in.
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Brian Turner has a memoir (My Life as a Foreign Country, W.W. Norton) and two poetry collections (Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise—both with Alice James Books). His most recent work is The Kiss: Intimacies from Writers (W.W. Norton). His wife’s posthumous collection of poetry (Angel Bones by Ilyse Kusnetz) was published by Alice James Books in 2019. He directs the MFA at Sierra Nevada University and lives in Orlando with a golden retriever named Dene. You can find Brian on Twitter @TurnerBriturn3
Lovely. I like to think that in some parallel reality, you are still circling, still kissing, still touching.
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Thank you for showing this glimpse of beauty in an uncertain world. The fly. The rain. The ocean waves. The love. Eloquence.
I am soon to begin chemo and in every moment I see beauty and a bit of terror. But isn’t this true for us all? Even the small fly.
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I love the musical fly observing the exquisite scene amid the brevity of life.
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I live near Anna Maria Island — this short essay is lovely. The spelling Anna Marie is a typo?
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Lovely. My sympathies for your loss. The idea of the fly holding all those images of the two of you is breathtaking . Now that’s an amazing writer — someone who an make me see a fly as part of a breathtaking universes and life process.
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Lovely. My sympathies for your loss. The idea of the fly holding all those images of the two of you is breathtaking . Now that’s an amazing writer — someone who can make me see a fly as part of a breathtaking universe and life process.
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I will never look at a housefly in quite the same way. Such a sad but beautiful evocation of a moment in time.
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How beautifully you weave the fabric of understanding, Brian. Thank you.
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Beautiful essay. The horses remind me of The Last Unicorn, where Amalthea drives the bull into the sea, allowing all the other unicorns trapped in the waves to escape.
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So, so beautiful! Thank you for this.
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So, so beautiful. Moments crystallized in stunning details. Thank you for this.
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Beautifully done, Brian. Thanks to the editors smart enough to appreciate it.
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Lovely piece, Brian. Thank you.
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Poignant and sweet and deeply evocative. Thank you for a lovely read. So very sorry for the loss of your love.
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So very lovely.
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Beautiful. Moving. Thank you for this piece. I grew up very near Anna Maria Island, got married there, and it was the favorite place of my best friend, who recently died from cancer. You touched my heart today.
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I’m sad for your loss, Brian, and pray you find hope and peace as you grieve. I found BrevityMag.com through someone’s Creative Writing syllabus. The title of your story caught my attention. It’s where my parents from Lakeland, FL spent their honeymoon in June 1960. My mother, now 80 and alone, lives up the coast in Port Richey. And I’m teaching English lit and writing in Hanoi, Vietnam. Blessings.
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The heart that wrote this, your heart, is destined to love again, it can’t help itself it’s such a very awake heart.
And on it goes …
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So beautiful. To have this kind of love..one gift..to be able to express it so eloquently, another.
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The love story as seen through the eyes of the fly was very interesting and beautiful. Your feelings were very evident through your writing and it was very moving. I really enjoyed reading this.
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This is a beautiful piece. I can feel the love that must have been in that beach house but also the sorrow that you must feel now. I’m very sorry for your loss but thank you so much for sharing this piece.
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I came to this website because I wanted to read excellent examples of flash nonfiction and I found one. If I ever can learn to write in this genre, I hope to write as well as you.
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To be allowed into the window of this piece was stunning, thank you, Brian.
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This morning, like every Sunday, I rise and recite my blessings and then turn to the Sunday Shorts from Creative Nonfiction. Today, the offering entranced me, shook me, woke me and, now, a few hours later, it still lingers in me, this beautiful meditation by my mentor, teacher, and friend, Brian Turner.
I sat with this piece two months ago when it was first published in Brevity Magazine.
If you have a few minutes to read and a lifetime to carry its impact, it is well worth it.
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Incredible story and a beautiful way of telling it. I’m honored for this to have been my first read in the Brevity magazine, in online publications, and in non-fiction entirely. Thank you, Brian, for sharing this piece of your heart with us.
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Soulful. I like how you weaved the fly and information on flies as you shared about this sacred time with your love now gone. May she meet you in dreams, riding horses – and may you remember them.
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This is as remarkable as your poetry. I’m sorry for your loss.
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As I am currently planning my wedding this essay has me appreciating all the little things about my fiancé I take for granted and wouldn’t want to live without. I’m sorry for your loss.
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