She Was

things i rush to write with a hammering heart

When my father died, he didn’t get sick, or fall ill, or anything like that, he just died. He was and then he wasn’t. Just like that, snap. There was no goodbye and no last words. No letter or advice, or I will love you when I go. I don’t think about this often. About what he might have said. Actually, I never think about what he might have said, had he been given the chance. I know what I said. I can remember each word, counting each breath until the last. I held his hand and I whispered to him and the nurse stood next to me and told me he could hear me, that she believed that a brain flooded with blood, deprived of oxygen, dead, that some small part, would know, could feel, could make it through and be present. I didn’t believe her. I’d asked the doctor earlier, as I’d watched tears seep out of my father’s taped up eyes, was he crying, and he shook his head, no. He asked me if I wanted him to explain and I silently nodded my head yes. I wanted to understand this, what was happening to his body. He sat next to me and explained that he was gone, that he was and then he wasn’t. I touched the tears on my father’s cheeks and held my fingers out to him. He curled my fingers back into the palm of my hand and explained synapses and brain death and involuntary responses. And I nodded yes, I understand. And it was comforting, that he wasn’t. I thought, if he knew, he wouldn’t be able to leave, leaving would be unbearable. I knew that. So when the nurse told me that he was, that some part, some tiny, bigger than dead part still was, I wanted to tell her no. But because I couldn’t be sure, but because even back then I understood that a nurse knows death better than a doctor, I rested my head on his steady beating chest and whispered to him, that he had to find a way to leave, that I wanted him to go, that he could, that I let him. And I held his spasming hand for another two or three minutes and then he stopped being. And that’s how that happened. It was a very long time ago. I was a little girl and now I’m not. And I don’t think about it anymore. I think of other things. Of books he read me and poetry he wrote. That’s what I think about. Until I read something like The Road. And then I think, what would he have said if he could have, if he’d known, if we’d been allowed that conversation, if it hadn’t just been me doing all the talking, telling him to go. Would he have told me about love, forever? That I could always talk to him, that he’d always be there to listen? That he’d keep loving me, that I’d be loved, that I wouldn’t be fatherless. And I wonder, if he’d told me about love, forever, his love forever, would I have believed him? Would I still, today, flip the coin looking for the tarnish, the blindside, the ending lurking around the corner? I miss(ed) my dad and it was a loss.

CP

She Was going to tell us who she was, but decided she wouldn't.

She Was

Issues

Outside it smells like diesel. It’s dry, the color yellow. Like silence I want to break, this summer has lasted too long. Time moves sideways and I move with it. In class I’m sixteen years old again, I’m not shy, but I’m bored and rolling my eyes. I’m not the first one out the door but I still feel embarrassed when he calls goodbye after me. As if I’ve been rude in not farewelling him. I wave and feel my face flush red. I’m mad at myself afterwards, this isn’t high school and I’m not a schoolgirl. I hate my breasts and my background. I hate that it’s early in the morning and I’m smoking outside in the heat. We share a class and he’s a customer at work, but he doesn’t recognize me. He smiles at me, then turns to smile again, lifts his eyebrows and says I look good. I enter the room five minutes after he does and he’s mid-conversation, he doesn’t see me at first and I hear him say that they’re trying to start a family, he and his wife. We make eye-contact and I raise my eyebrows. He shuts up mid-sentence and doesn’t speak for the rest of the class.

I do not believe anymore. I’ve lost my religion. And it’s not just this. I don’t write about the testing I do. How horrible it is. I am. I push myself and I test their boundaries. When they tell me they’re married, they’re engaged, they have someone waiting at home, it’s so easy from behind the bar. To be that girl. To see. Will he waver, will he say yes, will he cross the line? And they do. Time and time again. It’s so fucking easy. It shouldn’t be so easy. And it’s not the same type of guy, they’re not all drunk, young, or inexperienced, old, or jaded, they are not one type of man. It’s all types, and it’s easy. And it has nothing to do with validating myself, low self esteem or proving that I can. It’s some sick urge to see what it takes, how little it takes, how effortless it is–for them.

And the justifications, my god: she’s put on weight since we had kids, she’s not attractive to me anymore, she doesn’t notice me, she’s too busy with the kids, we never should have got married, we got married too young, I can’t please her, she doesn’t fuck me anymore, she won’t give me head, she wouldn’t mind–honest, she’s really cool like that, I’m lonely, I just want to be with a woman that I am attracted to, it’s all but over. And I’m sure that some of these reasons are valid, that there exists so much gray, but fuck, it shouldn’t take so little, it shouldn’t be so easy. All I’m doing is reaffirming my own lack of trust, playing out my issues, I know that, but then...to live with eyes wide open. I miss believing in fairy tales and if I could, I would go back to before. I regret knowing because I don’t know how to unknow.

It’s over in every way, but it’s not. I do it, because if it’s easy, then it wasn’t because of me, it was because of him.

CP

She Was going to tell us who she was, but decided she wouldn't.