The Novel-less Novelist

Happily Ever After

Pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone.

I told you to leave, to never come back. I threw the vase I love, the violet one, and we watched it shatter against the wall. I screamed my insecurities at you, all of them, and you turned around, stormed up the stairs, and slammed the door as you left.

I crumpled and I cried.

I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it. Come back.

I tell you to leave because I want you to stay. I want you to stay and not hurt me anymore, but I want to hurt you back a little first. I want you to crumple; I want you to cry. But you didn't – you just left. I told you to leave, and you did. You left. You left me.

I picked up the purple pieces of the vase, and imagined that they were the jagged pieces of my heart. I let a shard pierce my thumb to see the blood, but I didn't feel it. I don't feel when you're not here.

I layed in bed, our bed, the bed that we have shared, that still smells like you. The sheets are still rumpled with our last embraces. They don't know that you are gone. I feel tears welling up again, but then I tell myself you don't deserve them, and will myself tobe angry instead.

My anger is familiar. It boils up inside of me and I know how to let off the steam: I rip photos out of frames, I tear your clothes from their hangers and I am violent with a pair of scissors. It feels good.

I collapse on the couch, wrapped in a blanket that doesn't remind me of better times. When I am too tired for tears and tragedy, I sleep. But not peacefully.

When I awake, it is dark in the house, and outside of it. I know that I am alone, but still I check for you. You aren't there.

I tell myself you'll be back soon. It's just a fight, just another fight. You'll come back. I give it an hour, and then two. I pick up the phone to call you, and before I can even dial I slam it down again. You should be calling me, not the other way around. But you don't call. I pace and pace in front of the phone, but you never do call.

A day goes by, and then two. My eyes are rimmed in red; tissues overwhelm the room. I told you to leave, but I didn't mean it. Not forever. Why aren't you here? Why haven't you come to apologize? I call your cell, and leave another message, and another, and another, until your voice mail is full.

By the third day without a word from you, I imagine you lying in a ditch somewhere. I imagine car wrecks and muggings. I imagine that the worst has happened to you, because it's easier than believing that you stay away by choice. I wonder if I should call the hospitals.

Instead, I reach for the phone and call you again.

Pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone.

posted by Jay @ 10:21 AM