Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Nothing Is Where It Should Be.

The bedroom cluttered with clothes of dance parties and summer days. Coat hangers all about and the mirrors glazed in dust. Short skirts and high heels, bikinis and flip flops strewn about the bedroom; outfits I wore for me, but also for him.

The room is dark as I stand at the end of the bed looking to the place I took sanctuary. I look to his pillow on his side of my bed, where he should be and where he is not.

Nothing is where it should be.

I look to the past through those lilac sheets stained in our sleepiness and our lustfulness and our passions of seasons spent lying there. The comforter blue and flowered twisted and wrapped with the fleece blanket, all of this bedrock smothered in his scent and in mine.

The bed must be striped and the sheets washed.

***

I look to the days before, it took place at the kitchen table, I sat in his lap kissing him, so happy he was there; but something was off, I knew it.I stiffened, and rose from his lap and sat in the other kitchen chair facing him. Calm and quiet, I conversed with him as the tears fell and my heart sunk further into my stomach. It was so sudden, so saddening and shocking. My chin quivered as I spoke.

“How could this be?”

“Differences.” He says.

He kissed me and those same tears that rolled before began again; his mind was made and he left me.

For most of the day I sopped tears from my face. The heavy kind, that roll uncontrollably from the eyes, the kind that require no blinking, the kind make your heart ache.

The reasons he gave me I can not accept. They are ludicrous and irrelevant to us.

My heart stayed in my stomach aching and nauseating as I began the torture of mulling over the moments of where things may have gone wrong, and began questioning myself and what I may have done to spoil the happiness.

Was it because I wanted to spend so much of my time with him? I was finally in love with a man that was good to me.

Could it be the little weight I gained over the winter and couldn’t fit into my size tiny anymore?

The things I have questioned about myself have expanded and been mulled over and over in my mind; till my thoughts extended from me, to him.

Is he a fool?

Is there another girl?

I didn’t want my head to wander with such thoughts, but it did.

***

I rose from the kitchen chair and headed to the closet with my swollen eyes and running nose to the shelf of his clothes; but the shelf was empty, all his shirts and shorts, boxers and puma socks, gone.

He knew this was coming.

There is nothing of his left for me to wrap myself in.

***

An explanation I have not.

Things are not what they seem.

Love is tricky; it gives just as it takes.

***

I climb onto the bed, tears fall continuously from my face. I begin to bunch the blankets into a pile, and pull at the fitted sheet. I hug this bundle of fabric, bury my face into it, lay on to it and breathe in his scent as I cry.

How do I wash these lilac sheets?

How do I rinse his scent from my king sized bedstead?

How do I let go of what was, and embrace what is now?

The bed must be striped and the sheets washed.

Nothing is where it should be.

2 comments:

johngoldfine said...

I like oblique approaches; I like essays that back into the material and don't worry about elaborate explanations; I like linked vignettes; I like prose that allows me to visualize; I like good aphorisms; I like material not straitjacketed with strict chronological sequence; I like surprises (like those smelly sheets.)

All these you give me.

I don't like too many descriptions of tears, or at least not easy ones--if you're talking the kind of helpless, incontinent sobbing I think you are, those tears could use a separate vignette, more descriptive, elaborate and incisive than: "For most of the day I sopped tears from my face. The heavy kind, that roll uncontrollably from the eyes, the kind that require no blinking, the kind make your heart ache. "

B. Stephen. said...

J -
Just read this one and I have to say that you have finally told your tale of woe with the true emotion you needed. I can see the tears on the page, smudging the ink.

I hope that this process has finally helped you purge the demons of this breaking moment.

- B.