On the Way Out

I can't see any other end to us that would be more picturesque. Dead-eyed, I insist upon filling the vase you left from the last time you brought me flowers with fresh water each day. Their dried stalks and crumbling petals are out of place in the crisp swirl, yet still not as out of place as the yellow stain that I got when I tried to press a few of the daisies in our photo album on the day you left. 

It was desperation that left me there, struggling to flatten their beauty between the pages, but I couldn't help it. I had nothing left to remember you by. Your dresses no longer hang next to mine, the coasters I refused to use are gone from the coffee table, and they make the rings I left seem so much louder. The radio was yours, so I can’t use that to drown out the noise, but the mirror was mine, so I keep on staring at what you left behind. I try to find the parts of that ruin that you couldn’t love, thinking maybe I could tear them out and you would come back with fresh daisies, and wear your ring again, and put all your underwear back in the same drawer as mine and all the frothy dresses in the closet next to mine too. I couldn’t find anything in that mirror for you to ever love, though, so I tried to cut it all away and swallow down cheap red wine to make up for all the blood I lost.

I never understood the fear in your eyes when I told you that, were I to ever be dead to you, I would die.
I never understood how you’d hold my head in your palms and search my eyes for something, anything.
Did you want me to look away? Did you not know that that was just what my love was, something running so deep that without it I would be nothing? I expected adoration in return for the way I gave myself up to you, but you looked at me as if you wanted to run, if you knew I wouldn’t fall over the whole world to stay by you.

It’s Friday night, so I put on the red dress you used to love and drive to the bar. I leave the windows down because the sky is dark, and the car still smells like you, and I hope maybe the rain will fall and wash it all away. But it doesn’t, the sky just sticks to me the way our skin used to stick, but now it’s less like making love and more like being wrapped in dark plastic and left for dead. I drive faster, and ignore the way the road is nothing but dirt rising up to meet me for miles ahead. I think for sure that by the time I get there, I will be six feet deep, dreaming of nothing but how we used to dance in the filth of that bar. Part of me knows that you’ll be there, with her, and your eyes will see me as just another component of that filth, but it’s hard not to wish, when our days here were spent dancing too close. Our days here were spent with me trying to get closer, forcing kisses down your neck while crusty men with lusty eyes made no attempt at subtlety. You would try to ease away at first and then drag me to the bar. You’d sit and hold my hands an arm’s length away as you sipped your liquor through a straw, staring down at where the liquid inched up the glass the way I tried to inch up your body, time after time. You said it shouldn’t be like this, not if I loved you, but couldn’t you see that that is just how full my love ran? So full it sloshed over the sides for you, so full I felt the need to leave the stains of it out for everyone to see. You should know that love leaves its mark, with lipstick stains and puckered bruises of kisses and this outward need.

Yet when I saw you with her there, I regretted wearing my love so boldly in red and spilling flesh and smudging self. She was tall, in black slacks and a blush blouse with a god damn strand of pearls about her neck. She had a quiet mouth and quiet eyes, and she didn’t make you dance or drag you into her or fill your glass with more than you bargained for. But it was too late for me to be invisible; I had spilled too much. I kept on spilling-now, onto the backs of mens’ chairs, coming close enough that they would buy me drinks. I’d spill into each cup I’d emptied, leave a bit of myself, even knowing she’d never take a sip. No matter how many men’s glasses I emptied, how many of their hands grazed my legs and chest or held an arm or slipped tongue against neck, I was never quite as empty as I wanted to get. I needed her eyes on me one last time, but none of this was enough. I wasn’t enough. In a last ditch effort, I found my way to the back of the bar, where the man with eyes like murder watched me approach him, wrapped his fingers around my wrist when I swallowed from his glass, touched my neck as I pressed my body down onto his lap. It took each bit of my strength to press on, when each touch felt as if I was being burnt—and wasn’t I? Aren’t I simply lighting my own funeral pyre just to draw her gaze one last time? Love burns too bright and will always end up being nothing more than fuel for our own destruction, and I want her to feel my slow burn one last time. So I follow him, when his hands on my waist prod me onwards to the back door, and feel your gaze find me, finally. I want you to be afraid, to finally understand just what my love is. I will throw myself away to show you how little I’m worth without you. Your eyes meet mine as the door shuts solidly behind me, you with drained face and big eyes that finally shine through with realization.

It was all worthwhile, to teach you. My only regret is that I didn’t get to hear your scream when they found my body much later, in the alley against the bar. The shreds of red dress are now indiscernible from the blood smeared across what once was yours, and the ground, and all the trash I accompany.