I’ve
killed myself a thousand times
in
my mind, slicing through the delicate
layers
of flesh at my wrists and neck,
watching
blood seep onto the floor.
Over
the years, that urge has faded,
as
you have, reduced to a man
in
photographs and faint memories:
the
feel of your face as you kissed me,
the
pale scrabble of five-o’clock
shadow
rough
against my cheek. We were old
so
long I can scarcely remember the firm
lines
of your jaw, the dark hair smoothed back
with
oil. I see you this way only in dreams,
when
my mind spools out every nuance
I
stored over forty years of marriage: your
gestures,
your speech, the scent of your skin.
I
cling to sleep, to these images that vanish
when
I open my eyes. Then, when I’m sure
they’re
gone, I force myself to get out of bed.
Every
day is the same struggle, my arms flailing
under
the weight of all this water. I am saving
our
daughter, poor girl, who in the beginning
tried
to pull me out with doctors and prescription
drugs,
who called me every day and wept
with
her own child weeping in the background.
She
didn’t understand that I only had breath
because
you breathed. So, I pulled myself up.
I
made breakfast, taught classes, balanced
the
checkbook. Yet even now, after all the
years
that
have passed, I still can’t sit in your chair.
I
catch myself turning to ask what you think.
And
at night I fall asleep with the phone book,
a
slim yellow volume from 1981, the last year
that
everything in life made sense,
and
that your name was still listed
in perfect
alphabetical order.