Dreampepper

I am left by the side of the road, a fugitive leaning silently against a wall as I listen to his truck drive away. I'm tired, he said, of being the one who always has to be strong, and in that moment it was like he had wrapped me the most beautiful gift even as I crumpled, destroyed by the echo of those words leaving my own mouth, over and over again. I wanted wings, then, to furl around him, great feathery things, mythical and incredible, powerful enough to erase pain, the better to protect him from the world. Pinions that scraped the ceiling. Instead my arms found him, found him and held him, while a part of me shattered, horrified, against the promise that I would never be that person, as I resisted the sour memory of times that should never have been.

And so, standing in the street, solitude, the desire to howl down the moon. Anger at myself, at the past that robbed me of what this could be. Such a gift should mean more to me, I should be thrilled, yet here I am, incapable of carrying it, too weak to shout, too weak to even speak, too beaten down. Years of inequality choking me, I rest against the wet cement blocks of an anonymous warehouse office and try not to hate. If such a treasure had been presented to me a few months ago, I would have been beyond grateful, filled to the edges with joy, a flower in bloom. It was the only thing I wanted, just for myself. I would have been able to cradle it, this admired jewel made of fire, but now feels too late. Instead I have been broken. The devastating distance I tried so hard to survive has finally claimed me for its own.

I saw him in a photograph today, handed casually to me across a table. Part of my heart remembered and died, the rest of me got caught in the night captured. Shane was on stage that night, in a way he never had been before. We were there, this place, but across the room. It was this person, and my person, and Him. We sat bunched up on benches, layered like only the most comfortable friends can be. One in front of the other. I could lean back and taste happiness with my skin. I did. I could lean forward and see god on stage, orating. I cried. Later became one of our own little secrets. The image of him waiting outside, "I thought you would never leave." It was too cold, we said, we thought. It would have been perfect. A silence held between the bare space between our bones, the breath that never came after the knife slid in. I don't love anyone else, they've been pushed out, replaced by this one terrible figure. This creature that drives me to need blood, to need touch, to need... to need at all. I didn't know how before. I haven't drawn breath since he left. I haven't drawn breath since he returned.

I should have pressed harder when I knew something wasn't right.

This is the oldest story. My name is Psyche. It is widow. It is dust. I am a woman and my love has left me. Thrown me over without word, fled in the night when the candle was lit, but without a stanchion of rules for me to lean against. Fled uselessly, as I have no way to find him. History says I may get over it. That is all history says. It makes no promises for having a future that is not bereft of happiness. It is more honest than that, for all that it was written by man.

He called today, maybe while I was being handed his graven image. My vulnerability flared bright, limning my walls with pain, then flickered out. Flame requires oxygen and I have none. My blood is cold, sluggish and heavy, the same as my hands dripping letters upon these keys. I love him. I finally understand an aspect of religion I never did before, the desire to have protocol, to be able to hide behind ceremony. My child inside has revealed itself to be a newly lonely thing, unholy and made of roses. Petals are falling, He loves me, he certainly loves me not at all. Maybe he did once, but he forgot. He spent too much time as a bear instead of a mouse. Living in the skin of an animal, it's said you lose your way. I'm uncertain if allowing such creatures into the home is a good idea. They make messes, they desecrate the sacred places. He used to sleep in this bed. We used to sleep in this bed. I remember being touched, being touched without crying.

When he left, I wandered the airport, refusing to leave without finding myself a memento, a tiny piece of sadness to carry as a solid thing. You're like a dream, what if one day I'll wake up? My eyes grazed over tables for silver and found nothing until the very last shop. There, on a shelf, a necklace of glittering red crystals that looked like a slashed throat set in victorian pewter. I put it on before I left the building and I have yet to take it off for more than one day or one night. It carried the promise of his reality with it, holding my neck where he kissed it, where he touched me goodbye so sweetly that a porter smiled into his sleeve at us like in an old-fashioned movie. I took a picture of myself on the bus back into town, trying to see what it looked like. I tried to smile, thinking how stupid bravery is, how I wanted to cry. Black and white and read all over, that's me, I thought. He'll call when he lands, he'll call and I'll tell him about this and he'll laugh.

I feel better that I didn't believe him when he said he was writing about me.