i would very much like
to exorcise certain memories
i would really very much like
to delete things from my brain
to remove them from my everything
with extreme prejudice.
but would that mean
that would mean
that i did not have the lesson.
it hurts so fucking much because
because you aren’t here for me to say sorry.
and i am so sorry.
i say things out loud
i say them out loud when no one is around, i don’t write them.
they are so true (are they?) they are so true but i want to doubt, that they are not.
so i only say them to the wind.
i hate being alone so much.
i hate it hate it hateithateithateit
quiet and alone and lonely and cold even in this heat
cold.
even in this heat the cold strangles my blood
freezing it cold solid cold
i shiver in this heat.
i could have stayed at yours but no.
i am afraid.
the rain, the dark, the aloneness.
you held me in your arms you squeezed me closer
felt the heat bloom from my body setting it afire
holding me closer.
i tangled my fingers in yours
hoping to keep some of you for me
when i go.
i sit in your kitchen, smoking
vibrating in place i cant sit still inside
i don’t know how i appear, manic, most likely
i hate coming to you, needful, needy.
i don’t think i ever feel pity from you, i don’t think
(if i begin to think i won’t let go so lets just not)
i know i am not always like this i know that
but right now i am very much like this and it is hard to be.
much less be around.
i know i am exhausting.
i am so sorry.
I am feeling crazy this morning.
that in itself isn’t so unusual but this is just
This is so much on top of so much on top of so much please.
I don’t want this I don’t want this it doesn’t help to say I don’t want this until I say it I don’t want this I don’t like this I don’t want this none of it thank you please stop
stop.
this late at night
at this time of year
there are some very dark stretches of route nine heading north to home
so dark that i could turn off my headlights
and disappear
there are very few other cars
no lights
i could drift into nothingness
brightness
then black.
Nothing.
the road ahead opens its maw
promising to swallow me whole.
it could be done.
Over.
this void within my chest swells
my brain reels
this is a thing I know, now, filed away.
I have so much to say to you so much that, um, I just
i keep thinking that
I keep wanting to
I just
I just want to share with you. I just wanna tell you I just want you to see me now. I want i really
and I don’t think you would blame me for where I am. I don’t think anymore that you would blame me for where I am. Because I
depended on you so much
i depended on you so much and
it just took everything away.
you’re
gone.
and everything you did stopped with you.
There’s no one here. To see me doing fuck all.
There’s, there’s no one.
No one to report to.
There’s no one here.
There’s Mojo. He was real happy that
I went to bed at 9:30 and fed him first and got into bed and he came right in with me. And we snuggled all night, got up around six or something for his medicine. And then went back to bed.
Had like 10 hours of sleep sort of
what the fuck am I supposed to do now? what do I do now?
I mean, if I thought there was no way before and then there was but now it’s like everything is used up. I,
i
If I spend the money I have on the car, I will have nothing else.
nothing.
I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.
Shower, head north. Make more stuff I guess.
I forgive you.
I forgive you for everything.
I did not think it would ever be possible
but in this moment
bells ringing
birds singing
breezy air soft and comforting around me
there is no benefit to questioning any longer
it doesn’t matter
none of the things we said or did to one another matter now
none of the hurtful things, anyway.
you are no longer here to protest and I am too tired to do so any longer.
easier to let go
let go or be dragged.
listen, here: https://recorder.google.com/share/5161f077-5e7b-401b-9b15-565e53ccc52f
I am sitting on the damp chair (everything is damp)
It is 3:41 in the morning and in the space where my car usually lives there is nothing but a half a piece of paper towel
I am smoking and I am smoking and I am smoking and nothing is going to soothe this I fear
The woman who comes to repossess my car at 3:24 in the morning says, “I don’t want to embarrass you”
I am not embarrassed
I am defeated, again.
She says, “you have your health” I snicker
Do I? Do I.
“You have a roof over your head”
yeah and a house in foreclosure.
“Just call Nissan in the morning” she says, airily.
Just call.
She says this as if it were actually that easy.
Just call Nissan.
I try to explain that it isn’t that easy.
That I have widow brain and I am bipolar.
At the word bipolar she perks up.
“Do you need to call someone? Are you going to be okay.” wanting to absolve herself of further responsibility
The answer to that is obviously no and no. No I am not going to be okay.
No I am not okay.
No I am not okay no I am not embarrassed but I am desperate.
How am I going to get back to sleep.
It is 3:55 in the morning and everything is damp.
So if I’m right about this, all of the manic spending that I did, all of the things I did to treat myself, all of the retail therapy that I did that never filled any kind of hole, all of the evidence of this that is sitting in the house that I am losing that I am having so much trouble sorting through.
And now that I am not living in that house, now that I am trying to do my very best to figure out how to dispose of all those things, and it is so difficult and making me feel so empty and so useless and so all alone like I am worth completely nothing, perhaps it is because I am not
That all of those things that I collected, that I bought in moments where I felt not enough, maybe it is that I feel that I will be even less than not enough if I get rid of them.
Spending money on those things when I didn’t have it to spend but I bought them anyway because it was self-soothing and now that I have no money and now that I have to get rid of them even though buying them made me feel worse it feels like that was the only remedy I have available and now I am disposing of that like it didn’t even matter, like it didn’t even help ever at all.
i have seen the edge.
walked right up to it, lookedover.
i have looked into the abyss and it welcomed me.
its maw is deep and wide
and it welcomed me.
come, it said.
step over the edge.
or don’t
but i am here for you when no one else is. i will wait for you.
I know you will be back.
teeth bright and sharp
white and cold.
keep hold of what’s good.
that’s all there is to save me
that’s all there is
flashes of all the good things
grasping at anything to pull me back from this edge.
grasping at them
smashing them into my brain
shoving out this other
look away. look away.
The Salty Widow 