she called….

She called earlier that afternoon in April. She told me that she would be home at 4:15 and would like to pick me up so we could go run some errands. I agreed and went carelessly about the rest of my afternoon.  Simplicity was my closest friend at that time in my journey we call life. Day to day chores, sitting, reading and anything to do with my hands were all that I could manage as I felt such angst. I knew nothing of the cause of my angst, just thoughts swirling in my head that had nothing to grasp onto to tie them down to reality, so I avoided thinking, puzzling and sleuthing for an answer. As taught to believe, I trusted the angst was simply created in my body by my quickened pulse, unsettled stomach and an ache that loomed over every inch of me. It had not taken me over, not just yet, but the mere threat consumed my mind. 

Time ticked slowly as it never seemed it was going to reach 4:15. I wanted a task, something, anything to take the imaginary threat away. I closed my eyes as I showered and as I felt the water I imagined the water trickling down my body stealing every painful memory or thought being gathered in the drops and sucked through the drain far, far and further away from me. As I turned the valve off and grabbed the towel, I felt a wetness, a different sensation and I turned to look in the mirror and recognized the sad eyes and the tears streaming through the clean water dripping off of my face. The shower failed to take it all away. 

I dressed and I sat. 4:15 came and as per usual she was pulled into our driveway at that very moment. Slowly I stood and guided myself slowly to the door. I took a breath in and reminded myself to smile and that the next few hours would be a distraction, a beautiful time with this woman I loved so dearly, that there would be a moment when she placed her right hand slowly across the back of my neck; her middle finger first to make contact with my skin, to be followed by her ring finger and then the pressure would deepen and her whole hand would hold my neck with a slight tug to bring me closer into her. As my body would give in and fall to my left into her, her left hand would, in one motion land ever so softly onto my face and kiss my cheek as my head fell forward in awe of the intensity of her passion. 

As I approached the car I reminded myself again of the coming moment and the looming angst was immediately cast down with passion and power. I opened the familiar car door and slowly sat down and allowing my anticipation to rise and was damn near shy to make eye contact before the moment began. I closed the door and began to put on my seatbelt. The moment always began once I was safely buckled in and my body pulsed and longed for this moment to begin. I reached for the seatbelt and felt it in my damn near shaking hand and pulled it across my needing body and found the latch. I heard it buckle and my entirety was alive and aware. I pulled my head up and center and slowly started to look down, expecting the first touch of her middle finger. I felt nothing. I waited and became quickly dead as my blood pulsed loudly through my body. I saw movement to my left and when my eyes were no longer blurry I saw that she placed the car in reverse and now the car was slowly moving beneath me. 

I took a breath and considered quickly what was happening. Did she forget? Did something happen? Was it all a dream? What was happening? 

She completed backing up and the car was now turned and ready for the forward motion to begin the physical journey of wherever our destination was when my eyes glanced at the gear shift as her delicate hand was releasing it and in that second it was clear, it was beyond clear to me. I stared trying to disbelieve, but the clarity was too bright. Just a few millimeters above the shifter was a place where a small ashtray was to exist, but it did not come with the package of the car we bought a few years ago. It was just simply a barren enclaved spot where her wedding ring now lie, abandoned, alone and unlike the enclaved spot above the shifter, had a very specific purpose. As she approached the stop sign just a few feet from our position on the road, I felt my right hand grab the door handle and my body begin to leave the vehicle that had delivered this crushing and catastrophic clamp on my heart. As I disembarked, my left hand crossed my body as I was reaching for the door to close, when startled I began to feel those drops down my face again, my wedding ring was no longer on my hand, either. 

she never saw him coming …

​She never saw him coming as he crossed the threshold into her world. It was as if they vapored into air and became one before they ever even met. Delicious with desire he managed to stumble over his feet and fumble awkwardly away from her. Without intent, he relinquished his control and he quickly became hers. The storm they created enveloped them and kept reality at bay. Neither could find the ground and the air they floated in was soft to the touch and peaceful on their hearts. Reality, like a firestorm, began to tear the fabric of their covered storm and slowly pieces trickled to the ground until there was nothing left. She looked at him in the final shards lying on the swollen ground and knew that it was simply a dream, a desire, a comfort that held her together. Without the mended pieces she was lost and trapped within the hurricane that was left behind when they molded. Unable to piece herself back together she lay dormant until she simply faded away.

it seemed so simple

​It seemed so simple how they met. She on a cruise with her family and he at a bar near where the ship docked for the day. Casually he sat on his stool leaning over the bar grasping his brown beer bottle with his right hand. Slumped and slightly defeated his look said to her, as she entered with her sister. He didn’t notice her, not at first. As she and her sister crossed behind him he caught a glimpse of her in the mirror before him that sat awkwardly behind the bar. His eyes opened a bit more, but he did not turn around. He tracked her by her voice, or what he assumed was hers. He hadn’t noticed the sister and was unsure if she was with a male companion. He remained in his pose as he heard the first laugh and chills danced along his spine. This forced him to sit up abruptly, which gave her what felt like a long awaited reason to glance over. Their eyes met. He, ..he, dropped his shoulders and a solemn expression dripped onto his face. She, … she, nervously smiled and looked away as her pulse quickened and she became unknowing of how to respond. She felt a longing and a sadness that she could not determine. Slowly her gaze found his again. His face had not changed and the sadness was flowing into her. She crept up to the bar beside him and placed her left hand on his right shoulder. She slowly tightening her grip before he lifted his head and simply said, “I’ve found you.”

15 years later, he again, sitting slumped at a local watering hole where they lived, beer clutched in his right hand and his left hand softly laid on the bar with his silver wedding band exposed, she walks in unknowing he was there. Again, she walked behind him and he saw a quick glance of the woman he had devoted his entire self to since the first glance in a mirror behind a bar. His posture changed this time. He sat up, a smile charged through him and developed on his face. He was rejuvenated and full of life and hope. He placed his beer down with his right hand, slowly turned his stool in the direction in which she had walked. He lifted his left hand off of the bar and his right hand ever so immediately grasped the wedding band as his emotions took flight. Once the stool met its stopping spot caused by his foot on the rung of the stool his eyes found the object of his happiness. His fingers still laced around his wedding band, his heart so full of feelings, of desire and happiness, he saw her face; he saw her eyes looking at him. Every ounce of his breath, blood, emotion, and being fell beneath the stool, dripping out of his soul and his body. That look. That one look. That look that he had believed was his, was no longer. He could not gather his physical self to do anything. He simply just floundered to keep his balance. Not because he had drank too much, in fact he wasn’t much of a drinker, but because like a car sputtering the last ounce of gas and then dies, is what his mind, body and heart just experienced. She never saw him that day. He found his way out of the bar before she noticed him. He never saw her again. He never heard from her again. He never told any one of what he saw. He packed his things and he was gone. He left the state. He left , in his words, everything behind, because she, she was everything. He never recovered and he never was able to deliver happiness to his eyes, his self or allow himself to be steady within his emotions. 

She, she left that bar with her male companion that day. He drove her to a fine dining restaurant and as he walked around his car to open her door, she glanced at her wedding ring and felt every piece of love she had ever had for him. As the male companion opened the door, she slowly and awkwardly rose from the seat and met his gaze. “I didn’t know what was missing in my marriage when I agreed to this date, but I know now. It’s me, I am missing from my marriage. He is the reason my blood runs through my body. I am sorry to you, but I must go.”

With that, she closed the car door and walked past the male companion as he looked annoyed and confused. 

She walked the first block and quickly realized that with every step she was going faster and faster to get home to him. She was running and the wind was chapping her cheeks and she did not care. She dodged the occasional people on the street and tried to manage the streets as she crossed them, until it her. The blue Honda Accord struck her so intensely that when her head hit the windshield her legs and torso were already bouncing off the roof. She died instantly. 

He, … he grieved his loss for the rest of his breathing existence never knowing that she was gone. He longed for her to find him, but never knew that her last act was running straight to be in his arms.

and he said….

​And he said, everything is going to be ok as he slid his hand down her cheek. 

She lightly smiled as a tear quietly escaped her right eye. She blinked as her face flushed with the quickness of her heartbeat. She closed her eyes and whispered to him as he clenched his jaw and simultaneously removed his hand and his person, turned and as quickly as that, he was a figment of her imagination. There simply lies air in front of her now. She tries to breathe him in, but there’s nothing left to absorb in her lungs. He is gone, has been gone, and will forever be gone. The earth shuttered beneath her as the beast that is grief swallows her entirety.