strange dreams last night, which i anticipated. always strange dreams after we break up. restless sleep. hot. the smoke rolled in.
i wake up early and beau pees on the carpet while i’m brushing my teeth. i get stung by one of the wasps living on my deck. i’ll kill them all later. i drive to the mechanic and they tell me to come back tomorrow. i go to underwood and it’s warmer inside than out. so much for that a/c you installed. i take photos of the smoke shrouding the buildings downtown and send them to my brother.
“four, 90-degree days and now the smoke,” i say. “hell is a place on earth and it’s duluth, mn, lol.”
go to a different coffee shop and fortunately it’s cool and dim and not too smokey. the barista asks how i’m doing and i tell her i’ve been having a strange week. “strange” is not a good word to describe it, but it’s all i can think of in the moment.
“i get that,” she says.
“watch out,” i say. “the wrath of god could rain down on me in here at any moment.”
i order a decaf americano over ice with whipped cream on top. the whipped cream is an attempt to soothe my broken heart. anything helps, right? maybe later i’ll beg for mercy.
i realize i didn’t feed beau this morning so buy a ham and cheese croissant for him. it’s a far cry from the best croissant we’ve ever had, but he eats it with enthusiasm. i make a plan for dinner after pilates later today. i really don’t want to bring my car to the shop tomorrow, but figure i have to. i can’t keep putting things off. i’ve spent the entire spring and summer avoiding duty. it’s been good, but now i’m running out of time.
i think about how i’ve got to go home and kill the wasps. i don’t want to, hadn’t planned to. i figured if we could cohabitate in peace, then i’d happily leave them be. but that hasn’t been the case so now they’ve got to go. does that sound familiar?
i think about my birthday, which is two days from now. my heart aches. i wanted to spend it with you. even more, i wanted you to want to spend it with me.
“our love is a carcass,” i wrote in a letter to you last week. i’ve wanted to resurrect it for so long. i’ve tried so hard to bring it back to life, to have it be an animal again – powerful and feral and made of something dense and vital. but i stare at it now in my mind’s eye – see all the ways we’ve picked it clean, devoured what could have been, what should have been. ask myself how it came to this – this empty shell of something so beloved, so sacred. something i once deeply believed in.
“i love you no matter what,” you said. “in sickness and in health,” you said.
where is that love now? where was it when you said you don’t want to celebrate me for my birthday? can you imagine if i said something like that to you? i never want to hurt you but think you often lavish in causing me pain.
“death by a thousand cuts,” my therapist calls it. “he’s got to put you down so he can keep himself up,” she’ll say.
it’s not so bad though. i’ve grown accustomed to your onslaught. i know the signs, i see what you’re doing.
i can spend my birthday alone – unencumbered by your moods. maybe i’ll buy myself something nice. make myself a cake. i made a reservation for two for 7:30. i’ll get there as one and tell them my boyfriend and i broke up earlier in the week but it’s my birthday so here i am. i’ll tell them that’s just like us.
maybe it’ll rain. maybe a strong wind will come through and the smoke will clear and the water will get warm again. maybe, while i’m having my birthday dinner to myself, you’ll be balls deep in the woman you’ve been hiding from me. that would be just like you. could you call it a celebration? will you ever move on? ever let me go?
the heat did something transformative for me. first, when i had that pneumonia-induced fever last month, then, recently, with the hot weather. in my apartment, where it was 90-degrees and i sat at my desk, unmoving, dripping with sweat, sending one text after another, thinking maybe you’d bargain with me – see my pain and say something understanding, something vulnerable, something that would mend. that frivolous hope crushed into dust.
it all finally boiled over. the mess of hurt i’ve been harboring for months. and the compulsion drove our cycle forward, the knowing that my choice is to stay and face betrayal, or move, wounded by loss but open to possibility. the knowing that the carcass is just that – hollow and dead. that our love will have to take a different form now. that maybe a flower will grow the way they do after a wildfire and it can be beautiful and food for the bees. that my devotion will linger and i can savor it to myself and all the while let the wrath of god continue to show itself to me. let the strange dreams take over the night and let some sort of peace born of surrender take my days. let it all turn to dust. let me be free!
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