Tag: heartbreak

do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

‘You don’t seem to understand, sir,’ the worthy Lyon, my teacher, used to often say to me, ‘that certain words are made to go with others; between them there exist certain relationships that must not be changed.’

‘I can’t help it, dear teacher, but for words too I am a firm believer in the virtue of bad company.’

André Gide, 1911

Under the surface of the conversation lives another set of words, ur-homonyms, post post modern, the secret referential dialect of poetry birds, blue and gray, alike in species, but not in feather, the language an echo of captured ghosts. We are eye contact, insinuation, the rhythm and flow of a secret river covered over. He fiddles with his phone, pulls up a memory, a beautiful mention of jewelry and bones, and unobtrusively places it on my side of the table, the better to keep it between ourselves, the better not to interrupt. It is the best sort of message – silent, apt, instantly understood – spun from the fearless perfection of falling stars. It was confirmation of an unlikely truth, a gesture clear and unmistakable, almost but not quite an apology. We had thought ourselves as solid as stone, but then we crumbled like plaster under rain, our gestures blurred, our voices unheard and stolen by a sudden, dangerous misunderstanding. It was terrible, ragged and abrupt. We became a fire guttering, giving off no warmth and even less light, but this, I thought, looking up to meet his meaning, and its depths, it justifies what came before, this is why I thought it was safe, and why I will again.

my life as a misery ghost

Portal 2: Exile Vilify, a hidden song by The National

Monday: It was just after midnight when he opened the door. In the interest of brevity, I will leave out the next three hours, excepting my desire to be wanted, kicked in like a knife, a piercing pain that has yet to fade. Suffice to say, A. has gone away. Like in the old stories, antique, anonymous and trying, everyone a letter instead of a name, places expressed as an initial and an em dash. Off to the sanitarium, he cried!

After: I sat crumpled in the street where I had been dropped, left salty eyed blind and exhausted, my glasses on the hood of a stranger’s cold truck, too tired to stand, even as the the night evaporated as thoroughly as the warmth on my body where his hands had apologized and cradled me goodbye.

So that, for now, is that. After a multitude of absences and various failure situations, he has decided that he is not currently capable of being responsible in regards to my un/happiness and has withdrawn from my life. I do not know when he will return or in what state, but it is my hope, however small, however sad, that he will come home to me when he can.

he came closer while I was being pushed away

I am left by the side of the road, a fugitive leaning silently against a wall as I listen to his truck drive away. I’m tired, he said, of being the one who always has to be strong, and in that moment it was like he had wrapped me the most beautiful gift even as I crumpled, destroyed by the echo of those words leaving my own mouth, over and over again. I wanted wings, then, to furl around him, great feathery things, mythical and incredible, powerful enough to erase pain, the better to protect him from the world. Pinions that scraped the ceiling. Instead my arms found him, found him and held him, while a part of me shattered, horrified, against the promise that I would never be that person, as I resisted the sour memory of times that should never have been.

And so, standing in the street, solitude, the desire to howl down the moon. Anger at myself, at the past that robbed me of what this could be. Such a gift should mean more to me, I should be thrilled, yet here I am, incapable of carrying it, too weak to shout, too weak to even speak, too beaten down. Years of inequality choking me, I rest against the wet cement blocks of an anonymous warehouse office and try not to hate. If such a treasure had been presented to me a few months ago, I would have been beyond grateful, filled to the edges with joy, a flower in bloom. It was the only thing I wanted, just for myself. I would have been able to cradle it, this admired jewel made of fire, but now feels too late. Instead I have been broken. The devastating distance I tried so hard to survive has finally claimed me for its own.

Tear off my bared feet. Pluck out my eyes. Pluck out my hair, write out my name.

Silence. Only the collapsing echo of my love, a birdcage, emptied and drowned.

These hands, remove them for me, fold and press their digits gently, remember what they once touched, remember the velvet folds between the digits, how they tasted, and make sure to pack the nails extra carefully. Press them too hard into your skin and they might break.

These wrists, full of frail, bird-like bones, light as crumbs, take them too, for the sin of curving too well, for allowing the hands to cup, to make shapes in the air. Layer them in paper, remember they do not need starch. My feet, including the tired ankles and the firm flesh up to the knee, may be treated the same.

Remove, as well, my tongue, tear it from the root like a vegetable from the soft, red earth of my mouth. Strip it of skin, of any velvet layers of language that survived after the word goodbye. Do not spill whatever sad whispering kisses remain. They are of limited number and will be worth more later, each delicate, easy to tear, a collector’s item.

Take, too, my lips, stained scarlet, but drained of blood, pinched, sorrowful. Press them like a plucked and dying flower between the pages of a book.

Behind these is my larynx, my voice, now as dark and mysterious as a cardboard tube. Close it, sew it shut, and hang it outside in the rain. It will predict thunderstorms with the accuracy of a stick charted tide, with the acumen of an owl late at night. Once that is done, reach in again, press the roof of my mouth with the tips of your fingers as we did in love, wetting your nerves with the heat of my mouth, and twist out my teeth, each fanged ivory key a bead for your rosary, an atheist’s prayer for peace.

Stop my pulse next, the musical hammer of blood through veins, the countdown beat between this second and the next. Slice open my arteries with your fingernails, as tenderly as you might touch me in my sleep, allowing for the sweet balanced tension and compression of dreams.

Once you have broken my skin, peel my forearms, elbows, arms, and shoulders, organic fabric tatters, then take the hard knife of your mercy to the cream between my breasts, illustrating scarlet lines like elegant letters only the dead may read, break upon my ribcage, and note the already amputated heart, orphaned without you. Remark upon it, the hollow gap, the empty cavity underneath the cracked bones in the moist center between my lungs, remark upon it and continue, excise the organs that carried the breath that beat with your name. Pat them dry. Wrap them in silk, my undyed hair.

Dig out, as well, my liver, ancient seat of bravery, and my bile, black for Spring, to mark when first we met. Unseat my pancreas, my kidneys, my overweening spleen, as livid as it’s ever been, (anger, as you know, is in these days), my perpetually mistaken brain. For the sweetbreads you will need vinegar, for the ovaries you will need salt.

Somewhere underneath my organs, my failing stomach, the deeper tissue structures, frail as the same, rests the train crash of my spine. Pull it from my body like segmented string, each knob a memory under your fingers, a zipper torn from the history of our flesh. Caress where the joints surrender to movement, think of puppetry and wood, the blue milk pale of bone, think of how it arched when you asked it to during the dark forensics of sex, then coil it, paint it white, coat it in silver, and wait. Your guilt will subside.

“the dust has only just begun to form crop circles in the carpet”

The sunlight flares us into creatures made of dark, burned honey. We are tangled, metaphorically, literally. Marry me, he says, eyes on mine, searching past the layered blue stone for a seed, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. This feels like a moment I’ve lived before, somewhere out of reach, as solid as summer, as certain as a dream. Luckily, I reply, I’m already engaged, like a boyscout, always prepared.

Between our lines are novels unwritten, hammered into bone with pens of situational ink. (There is more to it than this, more and enough to break my heart.) He takes my hand, I will cover your fingers in rings, one by one, week by week, until you say yes. His hands gently trace his words in the air. Hang jewels from every part of your body, your fingers, your toes, your ears, your neck, wrists, and hair.

His fingerprints are warm on my collarbone, even after he’s taken his gesture away.

I only have one ear pierced, I laugh. Something I can fix, he smiles.

Anyone watching would think we’re in love. That we live together reigning as the pale sun and moon. Instead we are a melody heard over the rushing river sound of a freeway, a missed connection trying to find somewhere to stand on origami folded sand. Impossible. Improbable. All signs point to doomed.

How many weeks would that be? We are laughing again, our serious moment passed, submerged, allayed, alloyed. At least twenty-five. My toes curl into the grass of the park, pretending to glitter. Half a year of months. Our conversation launches itself into the sky. Who could wait that long? I would die. My head would explode, fall right off. I think of dandelions, ‘mama had a baby and her head popped off’, destruction, thumbs smaller than dimes.