Aisle Three

If I ran into him in Aisle Three, I’d be pushing a shopping cart foaming over the brim with groceries. He’d be carrying a basket, soup cans and a six pack I imagine, or maybe liquor, he isn’t 17 anymore, after all.

Internet sleuthing has told me he’s likely divorced now. Or, doesn’t wear his wedding band during interviews. Either way, he deserves it.

To be divorced. Or, to be ashamed of a wedding band.

I like to think he’d feel himself gazing down my body and up again, right next to the dried goods, without noticing the largeness it carries now. Not quite the same silky skin and bones that climbed over backseats to engulf itself on top of him, but still something sweet he’d know he felt before.

Then, I think he’d say something that stung. It would be so bitter and sharp, and I would giggle.

Because it felt so old and so familiar.

Whatever sharp set of words he’d choose, they would feel exactly like the useless ones he used so many years ago. Useless in pushing me away; perfect at making my soul feel like a flesh wound.

In the moment of my giggle, we’d both swallow a gasp at how different our faces look now, more like our parents’ faces than the last time we gazed upon each other, and that old feeling again --- so old, so familiar, would almost suffocate everything in Aisle Three.

Almost everything. Because the bottom of my stomach never needed air around him. The bottom of my stomach turns blue again, it still knows how, and feels like a mercury glob set on a table to be still. In an instant, slipping over every sharp edge into the flattest puddle on the floor, leveling out and suddenly unable to move ever again. Until the next time.

Except then it would end.

I know this because I know him. And it always did end. Somedays I thank God that it did, others I wonder in Aisle Three.

I’ve emailed before, when the dog died or after a one sentence, boozy, New Year’s Eve email when I get to reply: “New year, same Johnny.” But then, again, it ends.

Our swallowed gasps would pop inside each of us like the tiniest beginnings of a hiccup never born. He would feel something too much, and would walk away briskly, his back to my gaping jaw. It was always such a strong and brisk jaunt. He wanted it to look careless, always. Like he could not, in any universe, care any less. But the problem, always, was that he did care.

He would never turn around, I wouldn’t expect him to, but I’d watch him turn into aisle four like a warrior. His heels would disappear and I would keep my sob inside a gentle waiting room right on the surface of my chest, not even beneath my rib cage, just under the thin skin. But as soon as the car door was closed in the parking lot---

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At home I put the groceries away. In all the right places they belong. Someone asks for a grilled cheese and then I make four, but all differently. They all like everything differently.

My gentle waiting room is now empty of sobs but reeking of their memory. My ribs, perhaps, will now open up and take on some of the ache. Until the next time the grocery store speakers play a song right over Aisle Three that picks loose a memory that I’ll never bury deep enough. Then my imagination will take over again and the waiting room, now swept up, will lay in wait.