The Pool in the Garage

There is a pool of something congealing in my garage. It has been there since shortly after we moved in, nearly four months ago, right in the corner near the outer door. My best guess is that something packed deep in a box leaked out, something viscous and volatile. Being color-blind, I can't say exactly what color it is, but at a guess it's either green, orange, dark yellow, or light brown. It's translucent and although I used the word congealing earlier, I think that is probably wrong. It's like a gel or some type of oil, perhaps used for lubricating something, thick and probably sticky, although I don't believe anyone has gotten around to touching or even remotely manipulating it yet.

It's possible that I would have gotten around to cleaning it by now, but the puddle has not grown since the first week it was there and I thought it benign until today. While looking for an iron in the murk to temper a pair of unruly slacks this afternoon, I neared the puddle and paid it more than a passing, apathetic glance for the first time in months.

There was a lizard, preserved in death, looking like some skeletal hand had stretched out its coarse gray body, nearly half submerged in the liquid and partially on its side, tongue hanging down into the puddle. I crouched near the lizard, remembering its skittering, or perhaps that of one of its kin, in the dark hours, as the front door opened, startling it from its contemplative staring. I recalled how this lizard would make me smile, breaking my eternal reverie almost nightly, if only for an instant.

Behind the lizard was another. This one was much smaller, nearly an exact replica, tiny and fully submerged. A single ant circled the pool, as though waiting for a tiny prophet to part it in waves, revealing its sizable treasure, and just behind it a clandestine portrait of loss.

It occurs to me now in the retelling of this, that it stands as a grotesque reminder of the events we left behind when we moved here. I won't get around to cleaning it for probably another few months, but I do feel a slight urge to lift that large lizard by the tail and watch our mystery liquid drip in strands and then in slow, languid drops back into its cohesive and deadly whole.