sitting in my car, rain smashing into the windshield
coming hugely into the narrow slit I’ve opened in the window
smoke hazing around the inside of the cabin
It is pouring (again)
giant crocodile tears wetting my sweater
I don’t dare lower the window any further not even to tap my ash
thunder competing with the din of the rain on my roof
I have eaten and smoked and am grateful for the help I had in making it through this day.
I am not alone.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I turned 53 years old.
I spent the entire weekend with people and missing people who clearly love me and who I love so much.
I spent the weekend
I spent the weekend doing familiar birthday things,
Going to the Lyndhurst craft fair as I have done for decades
(maybe half the artists this time, different layout, timed ticketing, all due to covid restrictions)
stressing out from all of the unknowns
(known and unknown, thank you D. Rumsfeld)
wanting so much for normalcy
(but what is “normal”, anyway? I certainly don’t have a fucking clue)
feeling so much that I have to explain even though I know I don’t
It seems like all I have been doing for the past three and a half years is explaining and explaining and explaining because honestly I
don’t understand any of it.
Just when I think I do I get caught off guard and none of it makes sense again.
I suppose I’m not explaining to others so much as to myself.
I miss all of the things that we talked about, all of those things that we never did.
All of the ways we responded to each other, all of the good, all of the terrible.
The contrast, I think,
the contrast is what’s killing me now.
i do not know if I can take being loved this way.
I can say things out loud and
I can say things out loud and not worry about feeling stupid for saying them.
Being made to feel stupid for saying them.
I can say things out loud and not worry about
I can say things out loud and not worry about being instantly and immediately criticized.
I can say things out loud and not worry about who might be on my side.
I know
I know for sure
I know now that you loved me but I didn’t then. I never knew for sure. I never knew from one minute to the next.
You would rescind and retract your love like the outgoing tide.
Snatch it away from me,
away from my
craven, grasping, grubby little paws
I want to forgive you for saying these things to me.
I want to forgive you for this so much.
How can I miss you so much and still be so angry at the things you did to me?
That we did to each other.
I told your sister once that I never really had an accurate sense of your feeling for me, not that I felt I could believe anyway. That I always thought you thought I was stupid and not enough and too much all at once.
That now I can look at the last things you wrote, and know.
I can look at all the small lovelinesses you left behind.
I can look at those things and know that they are real, they are proof.
Not soon enough to be able to enjoy with you, no.
The very desperate need to hold onto them
((craven, grasping, grubby little paws)screaming to the sky to talk to you
for you to hear me
I am trying so hard to do everything I can to be well.
I am still so
I am still so unwell but I don’t feel crushed by having to hold up every other damn thing anymore if only because I have given up on everything it seems)
I can look at the small lovelinesses that you left and see them for the huge gestures that they were. Everything is relative.
I can see the unexplored and forever unknown possibility of us becoming better to each other, to ourselves.
Knowing how difficult it was even in the very best of us
knowing I would not be this person if you were still alive
proving my progress to the memory of a dead man
wanting so much to escape your critical eye, your devastating words
and yet wanting to show you that I am okay
I am not okay.
Yesterday was my birthday.
I felt loved, and cherished, and adored, and so sad for what we never had.
If you could see how people treat me now.
If you could see how people love me now and aren’t afraid to say, to show.
I know you would, too.
Every time I have seen JJ since my husband’s death it’s all I can be reminded of. How long it’s been. I know I mention it every time I see him and I have found myself unable to stop doing so. I realize (every single time) that this is not conducive to doing more business, or good for his comfort, or for mine, in fact. His profession means that he’s going to have to deal with surviving spouses, possibly more than he thought. I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to keep focusing on only that anytime I see him and I fear that I may have risked ever seeing him again because I can’t stop talking about it.
Listening to The New York Times Daily podcast this morning and an interview with a woman who was a medical examiner in rural Wisconsin, who explains that she understands that as a last responder, her presence is triggering for some people forever.
Do I think that I can rewrite my own code for this relationship? Do I think that I can rewire my brain to be thankful that one of my husband’s cardiologists is such a lovely, sweet, kind person instead of having the first and only reaction to him being one of the last attendants to my husband?
Yes. Yes of course I do.
My brain is nothing but elasticity and electricity and muscle and if the past 1,164 days have shown me nothing else it is this.
Most recently, I have been learning how love can help to reframe old photographs, to view memories through a different lens. To not make excuses for, but to understand motivation. To take this current love into the past and care for the people who were hurt. To let that healing wend its way forward into the future, to meet up with the realization I have now.
I wish you could see me now. I wish you could know me, now.
i don’t think love ever dies, not by itself, no.
I think you can kill it.
rather, I think it can die, but it has to go down violently.
Sometimes it can be so sudden,
like a switch,
an “oh!”
and it’s gone, vanished.
Other times it lingers,
hangs on longer than is healthy.
making its presence known
unpleasantly.
Taunting, but there is no smile, no joke, no closure.
Only unease.
Only anguish.
Not regret, no.
That’s the confusing part.
As angry as I am, still
As angry as I am I know that it was good
Not enough to stay.
Not enough to keep ignoring my own self.
Not enough for who I am now.
Not enough for who I have Become.
finally a spate of cooler weather of breezy
weather.
easy-breezy chicken francese
cooler
head less on fire
brain, still convoluted and badly tangled, untangling.
thoughts racing and tangled more, faster
but less
I don’t know less what?
Less rage, more anger.
Less fury, more sadness, and disappointment.
Less fire, more ice.
More clarity.
There is no
“what did I do to deserve this?” or
“I didn’t do anything to deserve this”
No.
Those thoughts begin to bubble up and are stopped at the first word.
Silenced.
No.
No. I say no.
I will not begin to embody those thoughts.
This has nothing to do with me.
Not ever again.
Nothing.
No thing.
it has gone on so long now that there is no coming back.
there is no balm,
no quiet murmured assurance,
no comforting touch that will ever, ever save me.
Save you.
Not from this.
I thought I knew you.
I suppose I do.
You know what you have lost.
I see now what I have gained.
1019p 16th august, 2020
where did you come from?
(out of nowhere, out of time)
you are at the same approximate place
in space and time
I have proof that time travel exists.
I do. It does.
His time ran out.
Mine began.
Ours is..?
Ours is beginning.
I have learned so much along the way here
To you, to here, to now.
I have learned enough to be able to show you the way
for it seems you are ready to learn.
i am hoping.
(i am hoping)
jesus gods i am hoping
i am hoping that it is just that you are busy
that there isn’t some other reason
“oops, it looks like his phone has been off/disconnected for awhile.”
disconnected
we have been disconnected
the last thing i know you saw of mine was thursday,
even though i text you every day, almost.
(i know you are busy. i am not complaining.)
six days ago.
disconnected.
it will be five months since we’ve seen each other
no longer am i worried it’s something i’ve done
no more paranoia around that particularly fun attribute of my chemical rollercoaster
no.
you are a doctor.
there is this virus.
i am hoping.
620p 18th july 2020
do you ever think of me unbidden?
do i ever cross your mind? i wonder.
does my voice pollute your day as yours does mine?
does my face interrupt your thoughts?
i know better than to ask
i don’t want to know, i think.
i finally felt safe, home.
i broke my own heart, leaving you.
i can’t stand to talk to you anymore
the pity in your voice is palpable
i have no idea if it’s real or not
only that it feels real.
desperate for comfort.
so when I think for a second that i want to hear your voice
when i am craving the security I once felt
i do better to remember
that it doesn’t belong to me.
I am reminded of possibility.
This couple, older than I am,
(not by so much that the differences are stark)
this couple who is writing their next chapter
successful, and snarky, and smart,
cool, and kind, and a little kooky,
warm, and funny, and genuine.
I am reminded that anything is possible.
Everything is possible.
I have seen glimpses of it, I know.
had morsels of it.
enough to whet my appetite.
my palate has become more refined,
my preferences both widening and narrowing in the same instant
as i breathe in
and out.
embrace, joyfully
discard with little fanfare.
there is no value in overthinking what i leave behind
no valuing the discarded
take the lesson and move forward.
that lesson alone,
separating the signal from the noise,
that in itself is such a heavy prospect right now
but in other moments,
(breathe, please. and again. once more. good girl.)
such as this one,
it seems thinkable, plausible
possible.
i have left so much behind am leaving
so much behind.
what would carrying it forward do for me?
cui bono?
for surely i have long since paid for these crimes
surely i am rehabilitated, getting there, anyway
surely i am on the right path
surely i am still going the right way.
it doesn’t have to all come with me
(why does this feel like i’m convincing myself?)
i can let it go
(then why is there still so much left to sort through?)
((can you just?))
(((can you?)))
thousands of photographs, blurry and out of focus
my life is out of focus, blurry
and getting clearer
more clear.
more,
focused.
as the unimportant,
the less-important,
the extraneous
as all this falls away is sloughed away
given away
pressed into other hands, joyfully,
gleefully, even.
no more guilt at not wanting to keep things
no more guilt at the money spent
the time spent
the energy.
spent.
even the idea of it
(the idea!)
the idea is lightening
not lightning,
l i g h t e n i n g .
alien.
Hopeful.
Full of possibility.
by lightening the load
both literal and metaphorical
I am making room for new.
Taking pieces of my armor,
loosening them
disarming.
i have become disarming.
It is only because I can see the enemy
enemies
for what they are
it is only since I have learned how to dance
sidestepping and evading
choosing who to embrace
and who to deny
it is only now that even in my most frantic moments, hours
I do not doubt the loves I have.
I know I am not needed,
I know I am necessary.
I am reminded of possibility.
I am open to possibility.
This girl.
You see this girl, smiling, happy.
This sweet kitty, snuggling this smiling girl.
What you don’t see.
The remade bed, the just-changed sheets
that have needed changing for too long.
The remade bed that until five minutes prior,
I was in, under the covers,
chest heaving,
desperate to recall the feeling of the embrace
of a good man, a sweet man.
The soft, welcome heaviness of the weighted blanket on my shoulder,
my hip.
so close to feeling the way his arm did,
draped across my shoulder, holding my hand, fingers intertwined.
his warmth behind me,
curving into my back.
what you don’t see.
tears staining my face
the roughness of Mojo’s tongue on my cheeks,
the delicate inquisitiveness of his nose at the corners of my eyes.
knowing that the memory of the feeling would have to last
until next time.
I am happy that I can remember,
even though the stopgap measures,
the heavy blanket,
even though trying to not be lonely only makes me lonelier.
The Salty Widow 