Emily Adams

The Week After Burial

            Day 1. I’m cold.

            Day 2. Waking and sleeping. Medicine. Sleep like death. Not close enough. I wonder things. Where did you leave the spare set of keys? I never needed to know this before.

            Day 3. They keep bringing food, I keep saying “Thanks,” even though I know by 3 AM the lasagna will be vomit and toilet water swirling down down down the pipes and my throat will

burn.

            Day 4. What was the last thing you saw? Was I the life that flashed in front of your eyes?

Are you here now, are you anywhere now, did you love me through the worst of it, and if I could say one last thing to you, have one last moment of truth from you, would I ask you if you fucked Amy from accounting?

            Day 5. Your brother wants the X-Files collection. You hate your brother. He cried at the funeral though and anyway, I guess you can’t hate him now. Only past tense for you. “Hated” resolves it. He can have it.

            Day 6. The room smells like decomposition. It makes me feel closer to you. What would you regret if you were here to do it? You have to tell me because you’re dead and dead things can’t lie. I don’t make the rules.

            Day 7. Laughter. Cruel and unusual. I must be angry now. More medicine. Sleep like death. Closer. Time always passes.

Some Months Later, In Little Bursts of Time

            Sometimes I hear your voice from the other room. I know that sounds crazy. Isn’t that a funny phrase? “I know that sounds crazy.” As if I need to justify myself to you, the one who makes me crazy by talking to me from the kitchen, three months from when your mother refused to meet my eyes after they lowered you into the ground. Anyway, when that happens it scares me, so please stop. When I’m ready, I’ll come to you. I remember our promise.

                                                            ___________________

            Couples holding hands feel like a personal affront. How could they not know? I pass a pair of them on the sidewalk before turning into the pizza place you didn’t like. A man with dark curly hair hands me the one-piece-of-pizza-heavy paper plate. He’s good-looking, like Brando in a dirty t-shirt good-looking. I hate him. My stomach churns with self-disgust. I sit in one of three empty booths and let the cheese burn the roof of my mouth, the hot bite landing in my gut like a rock. I can’t help it, I glance back toward Marlon, whose attention is on his phone. Probably in deep conversation with some starlet lost in the wrong decade.

            He might have thought I was pretty once. Now I might as well be a ghost.

                                                            _____________________

            I’ve walked past the gate a hundred times now. The first time was terrible. It’s bleak- the rusted metal, the screech I’m sure it would make if I pried it open. It took me weeks to go back again after that. Weeks of rotting in our bed that became my bed that I wish was yours instead.

            These days I circle the block for hours at a time, always coming back to the gate, pausing and gazing my female gaze beyond the bars. There’s nothing there. Not yet. Sometimes I get stuck in time, pacing back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth. My behavior might elicit strange looks if this were a different part of town.

            Tonight I finally touch the gate – let my fingers slip through and feel the air on the other side.

            I’m scared of you. Do you know that?

                                                            ____________________

            My phone has been dead for awhile now. No more messages. It’s peaceful this way, though it crossed my mind once that I must be jobless by now. That’s funny. I still answer to knocks at the door, for concerned family with well-wishes, to keep them at bay. They mostly mind their business. I think they perceive me as Grief and Grief should be left alone. Fine by me.          There are no knocks tonight, and I don’t expect any. I hear the sound of you running the shower but you’re not and you haven’t and you won’t. Yet… laying in bed, I smell your just-washed skin. I almost feel the heat from your body next to me. The feeling surrounds me, petrifies me, convinces me. Yes, okay.

            The room is awash in blue-gray twilight. It’s that time of the day when there is no fear of death because the heaviness of life is unbearable. My body feels like it’s trapped underwater but I move anyway. This time at least. I’m on my hands and knees scouring the floor under the bed. Well, it’s here somewhere. We should have cleaned this out before you died because I’ll never do it now.

            There it is, against the far wall, just behind the twisted underwear leftover from a night you ripped them from my body. Or maybe they’re just from an overflowing pile of dirty laundry. I stretch my arms out fully under the bed, my ear pressed against my shoulder, reaching reaching, muscles pulling. Fingertips brush an old shoebox and I nudge it towards me.

            I open it slowly as if I’m unsure of what’s inside, but I’m not. Just a little plastic bag of psychosis.

                                                          _______________________

            My legs are heavy on this walk. The night is darker, as if the whole town has turned it’s eyes away out of respect. The thud thud of my feet on the sidewalk softens when I hit the grass in front of the gate. I can’t look up yet- I just can’t. Instead, I breathe in the familiar smell of rust, feel the give of the ground. A little autumn breeze touches my hair and some wind chimes somewhere. Deep breaths. Swallow.

            I toss the empty plastic bag onto the ground and watch it dance away on the wind. It feels good to do a bad thing because, fuck, it doesn’t matter at all.

            My fingers wrap around the bars, feeling the old flaky texture rub against my skin and I push. The gate gives against my weight and screeches in a tantrum. I slip inside.

            In a sense, the garden is dying – the flowers planted by a loving hand are long withered, no one to tend to them, to keep them going, to pretend they have a purpose. But it’s also as alive as it ever was. Just not in a way that draws human visitors. Good riddance, really. The overgrowth and weeds, the insects who can survive and thrive are plenty alive. Even the rust that eats at the metal – what else can eat but something living? Death comes for everything – but it’s not death that has to stay here in the mess. What lives takes over what dies. What lives consumes it, covers it, eats it up, and survives from it. We forget the dead things. But not you. I won’t let it happen to you.

            I walk towards the back of the garden where the darkness deepens, and my eyes adjust quickly -not much light in my life these days – to take in a bench with chipped paint, grass growing up around the legs, a silent observer of the cycle of life and death, not totally untouched itself. I feel afraid. That you’ll come, that you won’t. That I’ll never leave this dark place again, that I will.

            Nevertheless – here I am. I’m making no moves, but I’m somehow in motion, toward the bench, where I sit and wait. Days, or hours, swirl around me. Colors and sounds mix and melt and fade, and my thoughts pass by until I think nothing, want nothing, feel nothing anymore. And then, there you are.

            There you really are. Not a shadow or sound of you but your full form, wearing your favorite black sweatshirt and blue jeans, smiling at me, alive as I am. Which is to say, just barely. I keep my gaze straight ahead as you sit down next to me. The weight of the bench changes. You’re right here. You’re right fucking here. My breath quickens and my heart speeds up. I clench and unclench my hands as my palms become clammy. So much life coursing through me- I don’t like this, I don’t know what to do, what should I do? My entire body is reacting to yours, the way it did the first time we touched, but this is different. This might be wrong. I hear you sigh, and I know your eyes are on me, but I can’t look at you. If I look, we’re in this. Whatever this is, however you’re here.

            Then I feel your thigh gently press against mine- that slight pressure of human touch that’s been missing for months. The little spot that warms while the rest of me stays cold. You don’t speak. I don’t think I could handle it if you did, so maybe it’s a relief. The lump in my throat is unbearable and I gasp out a noise like a cry. I don’t recognize the sound. As tears spill out I turn my head with effort, and look you in the eyes. They’re blurry behind the wetness in my own, but they are there and they are yours and they are drunk with love for me.

                                                            ___________________

            I’ve come back every night for weeks, expecting each time for this to be a mirage, but it never is. You’re always here. The street outside the gate is gaining it’s own little garden of plastic bags. I imagine this veil between us is more intrusive than we want to believe. Often it’s raining as we sit together, and that’s when I most notice how my senses have transformed. My aliveness is a stinging reminder of our separation. I smell the grass, the rotting flowers. I taste the air on my tongue. You don’t seem to notice any of it at all.

            Sometimes I reach out and let my fingers graze yours. Mine are freezing cold but yours are just there. You don’t notice this either. We haven’t spoken. Maybe you can’t. For me, there’s too much that words could break. Sometimes as I sit with you for these hours on end, my stomach rumbles- yours never does. Your body makes no sounds at all. I started bringing apples so I could sit with you longer. Maybe I hope you’ll ask for a bite. No, of course not.

            What good is this reunion when you have no touch, no taste, no words? I can’t help but come back because despite it all, I know you’re there. You always see me and the look you give is always the same. Longing.

                                                            ___________________

            Tonight, my body feels strange as I leave my apartment, on my way to you. My limbs are almost concrete, I’m moving so slowly. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen sunlight- I’ve become nocturnal. I grab a bruising apple and my magic bag.

            This time as we sit together, I have a compulsion to lay my head on your shoulder. My muscles are tired enough that the fear of rejection- or worse- doesn’t stop me for once. The fabric of your sweatshirt is soft and almost warm. Your shoulder is solid. If you would only lean into me too, it might all feel so real. At least you don’t disappear, which relieves me of my worst fears. I close my eyes and take you in. Hours roll on and I don’t even notice the hunger this time. And then, to my surprise, I feel something light on the back of my head. It’s your fingers, and they’re running through my hair.       

                                                            ___________________

            This is the last time I’ll see you. We both know this somehow, and so you reach out to me and hold my hand. My temptation to break the silence is unbearable but my sense of dread is unassailable. I’m so tired – my bones feel hollow, disappearing. Before I came here tonight, I looked in the mirror for the first time in ages, compelled by a strange need to confirm that I still exist, I guess. The knocks at the door ended awhile ago now. Everyone’s gotten the message and left me alone. That’s how it should be. But now that I’ve become the sort of person who’s only companion is the ghost of my dead lover, I have to wonder.

            Turns out I’m still here, mostly. But my hair is falling out. My lips are dry and white, and you could drown in the deep dark circles under my eyes. Yet here we sit, and you’re still gazing at me with reverence and a glint of something else. Not love anymore. There’s a searchlight behind your eyes- something seeing past me. I understand. I know how it will go. Okay.

            I lay back on your shoulder and let you touch me gently. Your breath comes in deep sweeping continuous motion, and I try to match the pattern. But my lungs burn and my own breath is made of quick and shallow bursts.

            Here we are at the end. How do you feel? You’re feeling things now, I guess. What’s it like? I don’t remember.

            Lifting my hand to my mouth is a herculean effort. I use every bit of energy left inside me, to bite my apple one last time. Not from hunger – that’s long been gone – but as a final confirmation. It’s ash in my mouth. I hand the fruit to you and you take it with ease. You touch your tongue to my bite. My vision is fading, but I hear your sharp intake of breath. I imagine the way your eyes must glow.

            I wonder if you thought I wouldn’t notice when they stopped seeing me – when they only saw the tiny bit of life within me- that life that was so small, so diminishing. How did you find it at all? How did you know it was something to steal? Anyway, I did notice. I knew the game. It’s just that I agreed to play and lose a long time ago.
            I sink down until I’m sprawled over your lap. Your body is warm, warm, warm. Your hands run up and down my back in a smooth sliding motion. You smell my hair, you kiss my head. As my limbs stiffen, everything turns to dust inside me. Returns to dust, returns. From dust you came, from dust you shall… But not you, my love. Not you. As you pull away from me, my body hits the hard bench and loses the warmth of yours, although I don’t notice it much. I see your silhouette as it walks toward the gate. It is the last beautiful thing I will ever see.

            And you will live forever.