I watch you in that bed. You’re pale and invaded by millions of wires. A thin hospital blanket is draped over your legs. The last time I heard you speak you told me about the raspberry Jell-O you had after lunch. You begged me to bring you mouthwash from the gift store because it left the worst taste in your mouth. Then, you fell deep into that head of yours while I was away. You always do that.
When I came back from the shop, the doctors had this sympathetic look on their faces. They told me you weren’t waking up, but I just shook my head at them. I told them you did this all the time. I walked away, and I burrowed myself under the covers beside you. I laid my head against your chest. The timid rhythm of your breath lulled me to sleep.
Today I woke up to a ringing in my ears that harmonized with the sound of your heart failing. I pull the covers off of myself and turn back to place them neatly over you again. As doctors and nurses stream into your room, I don’t feel any panic. They told me I would. But they also told me I would never see you again, and of course that wasn’t true. The doctors are making some big fuss, running around with defibrillators yelling “Clear!” every few seconds. They all weave in and out of each other, pressing on your chest and forcing breath into your lungs. They were trying to get you back, but I know that isn’t the way to be with you again. I walk out of your room and pull at the sleeves of the shirt I stole from your drawer the other day. I dig my teeth into my bottom lip.
I hear my shoes clack against the tile floor. I follow the rhythm until I step onto the concrete of the parking lot and realize I’m lost. I walk in and out of the rows of cars, knowing you’d be laughing at me right now if you were beside me. I can imagine you pull up the corner of the blinds in your room and watch me amble around endlessly. You always know where the car is. It’s like a sixth sense of yours. I find it eventually and drive home.
As I fall into our couch, the silence burrows into my ears. Your show isn’t playing on the TV like it usually is. The hum of the microwave heating up your late night meal is gone. Your slippers aren’t shuffling against the wood or plopping onto the floor when you pull your legs onto the couch. All I can think is that you aren’t here, you aren’t here, you aren’t here, you aren’t here. I let myself fall onto our bed and fit myself into the indent you left behind in our mattress. I grab at the sheets. I pull at them until they start to rip. I’m looking for you beneath them, begging you to hold me. I burrow into the hole, into you. My face presses into the bare mattress.
I make your coffee every morning just how you like it. I fill the mug with a little bit of coffee and the rest with creamer, so much so that it’s not even really coffee anymore. I always scoffed when you put two cartons of creamer in the cart each week. I hate it. I like to drink mine black, but our kitchen is now littered with mugs filled with nearly white coffee. I’ve been drinking my coffee from the sippy cup my sister left here the last time she brought her kids over. It’s okay. You’ll drink your coffee soon enough. I’ll bring some for you next time I see you, too. And some of those crackers you really like. I remember the first time we met you had a comically large box of them under your arm, and my first words to you were asking for a pack of them. You smiled, opened the box, and handed me one. I thought of this, you, last time I went shopping. I bought you a few extra packs when I was out so we won’t run out. Don’t worry.
I put on this black dress and black shoes. I forgot to wear tights, so the cold stings my legs. My shoes rub blisters into my heels, and I feel them start to bleed. I’m at your funeral. God is staring at me from the altar. People are talking about you in the past tense. “He was this.” “He did that.” And I want to scream because they can’t seem to understand that we will be together again. You can’t possibly be gone, whisked away into some other dimension where you are only someone who was. Because you are to me. I can’t take this. I run out of the church and sit with my back against a huge pile of snow a plow must’ve put together. I press my head against it. My hair gets wet, then starts to freeze into it. The cold, it breaks my focus. Makes it so that all I can think about is how my skin is stinging and my thighs are pressing against the pavement. The cold digs into my veins and the snow seems to melt through me. I press myself deeper. It cradles me.
My mom comes out and she’s yelling something at me, but all I can think is that I’ll be with you soon. I think about your coffee and the crackers I put on the pew beside me when I first sat down and hope no one has touched them.
I miss you.
My mom offers me her hand, and I grab it to hoist me up. She’s still talking to me. Her hand is around my shoulder. I don’t know what she’s saying. I don’t know what anyone is saying. I would know what you were saying. I’m sure of it. But I follow her anyway; she wouldn’t understand if I didn’t. I force my steps to fall into the rhythm of hers because all I can focus on is one foot in front of another. Her one foot in front of another. My one foot in front of another. The sound refracts in my head until I wish I could cover my ears and scream. I don’t scream. Instead, I sit back between her and your mom. Your mom grabs my hand. She squeezes it even though I’m sure it’s freezing. She rubs small, consecutive circles along the back of my hand, and I feel it thaw a bit. Tears are falling down her face, but I want to shake her and tell her that I’ll be back with him soon. There’s no need to cry, no need to be sad. I can’t tell her that though.
People sing from dark blue hymnals. People share memories of you. Your mom tells us about the time you went adventuring in your childhood backyard and you stole your father’s camera. You came back that night and sat in your room for hours making a slide show of all the animals you saw and what you knew about each of them. She wipes violently at the tears that run down her cheeks while she’s getting to the end of her story. Your uncle goes next, and he talks about the time you helped him move a cabinet all the way up three flights of stairs only to realize an hour later you had to move it back down. My mom talks about how you gave her the most beautiful flowers the first time you met each other. She talks about your kind smile. My chest tightens. I dig my fingers into my thighs. People keep talking, but I can’t understand them anymore, not that I try too much. My mom sneaks her arm around my waist, and she nudges my head onto her shoulders as I watch everything. It goes on for what feels like hours, but all I can think of is what it will be like to be in your arms again. I’ve been craving it, you know. I’m sure you know because you know everything about me.
Everyone starts filing out behind the men carrying your casket out of the church, and I know it’s my moment. I hide in the bathroom until everyone is gone. I have to wait more time because I know my mom waited outside that bathroom door for at least 30 minutes. I can imagine it now, her pacing back and forth, back and forth. Her mouth opening and words forming on the edge of her tongue, but something holding her back. That something is knowing I wouldn’t listen. I guess she knows me pretty well. Not as well as you. No one as well as you.
I leave the bathroom. And your absence hits me. I can’t see you. I can’t see that dark shiny casket you are resting in. Something in me breaks a little, and I can’t do anything but try and find you. This church, Jesus is staring at me again, hanging from his cross. I stare back. The blood spills from his palms. I turn away. I grab your coffee and your crackers and walk until I see you. The casket is closed, so I pull at its hinges. The wood feels smooth between my fingers. I listen as the metal grates at itself. But nothing can bother me once I see your face. Your nose, those eyes. That mouth, your hair. Everything. I can see a smile ghosting your lips. I kiss you, I can’t help it. I run my fingers across your jaw, now dusted with a sheer layer of a powder slightly darker than your skin.
I set your coffee and crackers beside you, and I pull myself up to your level. I swing a leg across the border of the wood and pull myself in. I slide in the empty space beside you. I breathe because you are there.
I close the casket behind me and feel the darkness envelop me. You’re here with me again. I smile into the black around me. My cheeks flush. I think about our first date, and how you walked me home 30 minutes out of your way in that freezing rain.
I hate to admit it, but in those days, when you were here and not with me, I had started to get used to the feeling of a world without you. I shake my head. I want to forget that thought, get it loose from the ridges of my mind. So I press my head against your chest and lace my arm under your neck. I twist the other one around your waist. I let my body melt into yours. I fall asleep to the silence between your ribs. Oh what heaven is this?
When I wake up, we are in a deeper darkness than before. I run my hand across your suit jacket. They picked your best one. I find the little bump on the bottom of the seam where you tripped and ripped it right before we went to a wedding. I run the tips of my fingers across my sloppy sewing. I wish I could see your face, but a chilling cold presses down on me. The sliver of light coming in from the edges of the coffin isn’t there anymore. My heart speeds. I chastise myself. Because you are here, and what else could anyone want? You and me.
I feel like someone has crawled into my lungs and is stealing bits of my air. I tell you my breath is being taken from me, but you don’t respond. Maybe you don’t understand. It’s okay. I don’t know why this is happening. I take a deep breath in. It doesn’t work, so instead I think. I pull myself closer to you. I feel your arm shift under me and wrap itself around my body. Your fingers press into my waist. I twist my leg around yours.
My mind gets fuzzy. My limbs start to feel blurry at their edges. I imagine a world so far into the future that humans become a distant past, remnants buried between layers of sediment. Maybe after us will come some further evolution of humans or maybe a sort of alien race, but they will mine this world as we did. They will dig at our bones as we did the dinosaurs’. And when they find yours and my bones twisted up in each other, they will create a great creature out of us. I wonder, as my eyes force themselves closed, what we will look like propped up under the fluorescent lights behind the glass of a museum exhibit. I sigh, oh, the creature we will become
Alba Mastromatteo explores grief and the creature it can create.