I found a large half-bottle in the makeshift farm vet kit under the sink. Rationed it, bought another as soon as the blank spots on the store shelves began to fill again.
C3H8O: colorless, flammable, disinfecting. An azetrope with water, its boiling point is 176.67 degrees Fahrenheit. Depressed melting point. Slightly bitter taste. Unsafe to drink.
Isopropyl, we were supposed to use you for everything then. A spray bottle in the car for hands, steering wheel, the outside of snack packages or seltzer cans. To hose down the groceries. We started buying three weeks-worth at a time. More groceries than we could fit in the cabinets and refrigerator. Hours of wiping, heaps of damp balled up paper towels piling the countertop. My hands red, raw, peeling dry.
Isopropyl, I grew dizzy with the stink of you. Your scent like that of nail polish remover reminded me how my mother banned my sister and I from using the stuff in the house after we spilled it on the newly refinished hardwood floor.
Isopropyl, speaking of the smell of nail polish, remember that time in Bali in at twenty? Drinking arak with T until I was puking in a field, a beautiful stranger holding my hair? Nothing new I guess, me being too hungry for the burn.
What I mean, Isopropyl, is that I found myself more prepared for the time of you than I should have been. Too used to living outside myself. Already ready for the edge of the cliff. You’re like the clearing in the middle of the wood, the eye of the hurricane. I stood inside your too-green moment and found I could breathe.
Which is not to say, Isopropyl, that there weren’t days I careened: picked fights with Walker, made plans to shave off half my hair, sloshed miles through mud and rotten snow sucking olives soaked in gin.
Still, it turns out there is something about terror I’m suited for. The way it drops me back into my body. The way enough of it can actually quiet my mind, scorch it clean. I loved and hated best those days when we saw no one but each other.
It was so precarious all of it, and yet it was not. Isopropyl, I mean that. We stood inside the timber frame Walker built. We stood and looked up and the light fell down upon us. We climbed up the ladder and tightrope-walked the crossbeam. Walker boosted me into eave truss to nail the pine bow for luck. We thought, We are the only ones crazy enough to build right now. And of course that wasn’t true, but also it was—suspended inside that moment as we were.
Without a roof, the frame swayed lightly in the wind, but it was solid. Heavy beams Walker had cut and chiseled and I had sanded and oiled and the crane had lifted the bents and Walker had winched them into place and we watched it come into being in front of our eyes and it was impossible not be believe it meant something.
Isopropyl, what I am trying to say is that there is beauty even at the center of a wound. Especially at the center of a wound.
You left traces of yourself all over this place. Alcohol scars everywhere. Like cigarette burns. All of us marked. All of us peeled. Holes that will stay with us. Stigmata round as the spot on my ankle from that time I spilled boiling water into my boot and W was screaming at me to get it off quick and what was I thinking carrying that five gallon pot without a lid and I was screaming back and we got my boot off, we did.
But the skin, Isopropyl, it had already melted away. And I stared at the sudden new terrain where my skin had been, waiting for the pain to hit. Oh and when it hit, it hit. Wall of throb. Night after night. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t wear a boot for months. There was the mess of it. The ointments and bandages and wraps. The oozing. It seemed as if the pain would never go away, only change shape. I could feel the skin tightening, contorting as the scar tissue formed.
But first, Isopropyl, there was just that moment—the sudden, clean redness of it, my skin all scalded away.
Thank you for this. For me this moment here is where I felt the weight of you: “it turns out there is something about terror I’m suited for. The way it drops me back into my body. The way enough of it can actually quiet my mind, scorch it clean. I loved and hated best those days when we saw no one but each other.” Love all of that. The speaker revealing themselves. There’s something about terror that drops a person back into their body. And of course how isolation and making everything sterile becomes this thing that you muscle through and the person walking with you through those things is a blessing and an annoyance. And isopropyl creating a sting that the speaker was prepared for because the implication is that other moments have made this moment survivable. Mhm. Thank you for writing this.
Isopropyl as a pandemic staple is a brilliant specific connector to reminisce as a confidante and lifesaver.
WOW Julia!!
Damn, so so much builds inside this beauty! The letter to Isopropyl: “You left traces of yourself all over this place. Alcohol scars everywhere. Like cigarette burns. All of us marked. All of us peeled. Holes that will stay with us.” That this moves us through all of her pain. “There is beauty even at the center of a wound.” absolutes throughout this piece. You dip the reader into macro moments through the pain! Truly masterful! LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS!
Hi Julia, this is remarkable, and so much to admire! Love that you took on the pandemic prompt, and that Isopropyl not only becomes a character, but is “addressed” in an exceptional epistolary manner!!! Love Walker, too as an additional character, and the whole ‘building’ during the pandemic (which many folks I know did!) Mostly I adore your skillful poetic prose. Makes me want to read everything you write and have written! Bravo!
Wow, Julia. You lured me in with my own pandemic experience of isopropyl, then pulled me into your pathos, rich metaphor, and prose. All so masterful. I’m blown away.
Hi Julia.
I felt sort of hypnotized reading this. The voice and language are so unique and haunting, confessional, personal, lyrical and vulnerable. So many things stand out, and that ending is perfect.
This part, in particular, had me gushing–
Still, it turns out there is something about terror I’m suited for. The way it drops me back into my body. The way enough of it can actually quiet my mind, scorch it clean. I loved and hated best those days when we saw no one but each other.
Wow, Julia! This is so visceral I was smelling Isopropyl and nail polish. And feeling the burn I once had on my leg from a motorcycle exhaust. The lines that Len quoted were also the most impactful for me. Pleasure to read your writing.
Julia, I love the emotional spill of this letter, the initial scientific understanding opening out to everything. I was with it from beginning to end. Amazing work!