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.
I miss you.
I’m trying so hard to not miss you and I know that isn’t the point
I am trying so hard to be independent and stand alone on my own two feet even though it is clear that I cannot
when it seems that I have finally gotten my footing underneath
after that terrible summer
i have gained my balance and then I meet you.
you who sweeps me off my feet and takes my breath away in one fell swoop.
I know that you are coming back I know that I have nothing to fear and yet all I have is fear.
I take smiling pictures of myself to prove that I am happy, prove to whom, prove to myself? but the smiles don’t come easy.
crooked smiles, nonetheless.
I think about what you might be doing while I am sitting here and I know that doesn’t serve any good purpose but I do it anyway.
I watch the waning moon rise higher in the frigid sky,
fingers turning white with cold.
clouds moving with the slow scud of a Star Wars sequence,
branches in front of my windshield frantic and terse.
It is finally too cold to sit out here any longer but I am not yet finished.
I do not feel anywhere near able to sleep.
I am missing all of the missing tonight.
All of the missing who mean anything.
Even the ones I don’t want to miss.
The ones I would rather the missing be inequal.
I wish they would hurt like I hurt. I wish I knew they did.
That isn’t very gracious.
I don’t feel very gracious.
I am driving and I am listening to the President and I am crying
I am crying and I am crying and I am crying and they are huge ugly tears
“A dose of hope”, he says and the tears flood down my face “a dose of hope” he says
Hope is something that I never ever had.
It was never even on the list of things to look for.
Hope was for the foolish and the losers and the suckers.
the idea of hope was as painful as the reality of unrequited love, a crush that goes nowhere, being ghosted by someone you really, really thought you liked.
Hope was not for me, not ever.
but maybe,
maybe now it is.
maybe I can have some for myself, just a little.
I’m not asking for much.
Just a little.
Hope.
The taste of it, the texture.
rolls around in my mouth, between my fingers.
hope.
I draw my hand back, my heart back sharply from the edge of this hope
too sharp, this edge, too unknown.
My chest tightens, my jaws clench, my fingernails dig into my palms.
breath shallows, and hitches as my eyes darken, kohl smudging my cheeks.
“Guess what!” the President says, excitement clear and bright through the speakers
“We landed a rover on Mars!”
hope.
i am so fucking angry with you
you aren’t here to help
you aren’t here to help me
i can’t do this shit by myself
you know this and you’re not here
i cannot do this fucking fucking shit myself.
it is elevensixteen now but at 1111
(waiting for the strike?)
so much flash of anxiety flash of panic
i learn have learned to keep track to
watch
to pay attention to monitor
to see what
i mean it is always as it is happening
it is always in the middle
although
increasingly it is on the way up
in
out.
it is no longer as the smoke is clearing
it is no longer when there are horrified faces
there is actually (sometimes)
(sometimes)
time to stop it before i
before without i cannot without
without
without distressing to the point
of disintegration
so it is an hour later and it would seem
that I was unable to stave off this
this disintegration
this dysphorically manic tumult
yet another hour later
i know it is having an effect,
taking the sweet
but i really just don’t want to be right now.
not at all.
146p
there shouldn’t be this much rage
there shouldn’t be this much pain
it should have eased by now i am trying
i am trying everything to be eased.
another hour later
chest tight
shoulders tight
jaws tight
there are two and a half hours to go
before I can go
core tight
i feel frozen, stiff
as if the only parts of my body i can move
my left hand to write, move across the
page, turned forty five degrees to
not ink up my hand
another hour gone
anger, still
no patience, rattled
i need sublimation
i need to be underneath and out
i need to be out and gone
one hour eleven minutes to go.
twenty minutes left.
almost there.
almost there.
The Salty Widow 