DEPARTURE

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They argued loud and ugly, screaming words that pierced like knives thrown at a side show. This time there was no holding back.
She said, "Go then, just go!" and she tossed his papers, like confetti, and watched them glide on the air as he walked down the stairs, and out of her life.
She took all of the bits and pieces of him and tossed them into cardboard boxes. She packed up all of his things, his tangible bothersome things, and put them on the curb in the rain. They became soggy squatting there below her window. She watched them bulge in the drenching rain filling themselves with what? Grief? Blame? Such a waste, she thought.

The next morning, she washed the bed sheets and let the mattress air. His smell was present in the closet, the towels, her hair. She vacuumed the carpet, and when she found a toothpick, sank to her knees sobbing.
She had packed up and tossed out everything, and still, during the days that followed, she would find something else to sting her eyes. A corn chip here in the cushion of the sofa, a popcorn kernel there, broadcast unthinking.

When she said, "Go", she didn't mean leave a trail of scattered seed where she would discover him again. She didn't mean take the curve to oblivion and send a policeman to her door, when the sun was shining.
She whispered, "no...no, please no," as the man in the uniform stood before her, his mouth moving slowly, saying words she refused to comprehend. She felt her voice pleading, dismissing his words.

She touched her throat, felt the pulsing scream, but there was no sound. She would have to go on screaming forever and still not be heard. She willed herself to go under the surface of this silence as if it were a body of water. She wanted to sink below the murky walls and wavy floor and hang on the underside of that thick black stillness.
Dive deeper she thought and if asked, you could say you were resting your eyes and no one would suspect that you had been searching for...for...


When the officer closed his book and said, "I'm sorry," she left the house.
In a daze she walked along the shore line looking for clues. The sun was shining on the water, laughing at her sadness. Shining on the water and reminding her of him, when they jogged and laughed and fell on the sand, with jelly legs, then kissed and looked into the sky, seeing the same dream. They had all the hope in the world then, and courage. They had more than enough of everything, even love.


When she said, "Go", she didn't mean take her dreams, leaving the children unborn, floating, longing for life. Children whose faces she saw in the night. Faces that drifted toward her in her dreams, whose breath she could almost feel.

Along the bay shore she looked for signs, traces, something...and there in the distance, she saw a sweat shirt floating, its backside secured with mounds of rocky sand. The chest billowed skyward, plump with water. Its sleeves reaching toward an unknown shore, eagerly reaching like a child for its mother. The sweat shirt was grey and made of soft fleece. She had felt it many times as it fell from the dryer, warm on her ankles. Picking it up, wanting to share the warmth, she had rushed toward him with it, and he had flinched.

Was he afraid of the warmth being offered? She felt their love begin to fade right there in her hands, so she folded the sweat shirt and put it away. Had he remembered the moment, felt the loss the same as she?


Stepping lightly now, toward the garment, not wanting to disturb its peaceful swim, she read the letters printed in blue. "Carpe Diem." Seize the moment.
He had seized his moment, but had forgotten how many small and tender ways he would linger, how many hours would be left waiting to be filled.

A voice, so clear so pure, began speaking to her. She heard it in the crash of every wave. The sleeve of the sweat shirt brushed her leg and she shuddered. The fleece, like a caress, was warm once more. She looked down at the pulsing teasing words.

"Go", the voice whispered. "Go ahead, just go."

The water was changing from grey to a brilliant turquoise as pure as any heaven. And the grey...the grey was not a color at all! It was shadows! Simply shadows of clouds moving slowly, changing only the surface, and for just one brief moment!
"Patiently taking their time," she thought. The kind of patience we should have had...the kind you...you should." And then she felt the blame, that same old blame...and guilt.

Tears were streaming warm on her face now. Tears, that should have fallen while his arms were around her. Those would have been brief healing tears instead of these burning drops stinging her eyes forever.


She watched the changing water, the lake he had loved so much...and then the sky. That great span of melon colored sky melting into the blue. The sky he had said could be hers if she would but claim it.
His water...her sky.
After resting her eyes for a moment and willing her thoughts to fly, she calmly flung {the shirt away...and...}