The Dying Truck and The Footsteps Around It

Day started with my clenching of this blanket that’s never changed between the time it was laced around her shoulders to when she decided that this couldn’t live anymore. These mornings used to be what I slept for. I’d watch the sun send these fine slots of light over the skin of her back, almost filing it perfectly to make everything less overwhelming. She’d hum “good morning baby” but it was more tired than that, less punctual or articulate- it was more like “mmmgoodmorningbaby.” All one word. The same way that you’d say ‘yes, please” to breakfast as a kid.

I think I did a nice job of savoring those moments, they were too perfect not too. An hour would pass, my arm would be asleep under her head that she thought was too big and I’d just let it get it’s rest while she got hers. And I knew that when they both woke up my arm would feel like it’s being stabbed over and over again, but I just didn't care. Even now I don’t care that I didn’t care, if that makes sense.

Being torn apart is a funny thing, the sun has only become irritating to me now and the winter keeps talking down to me- much more than usual. I think I’m just bathing in this, leaning into it, letting it die and kill a small piece of me with it. Think about that- there’s something beautiful in it somewhere. There’s something beautiful about beauty dying, about something perfect that was never meant to last forever, reaching its finish line. All anyone can do is hope that the finish line isn’t only a few steps away. We always want it to be further, by days or 80 years. Sometimes I think that maybe if I were the one to end it, if I could do things for my own good, I’d know all the deep answers that there were to know- I’d think she was in my back pocket in some fucked up way, heartbroken and waiting for me to decide that she's the one again. But no, not this time. This time I am most certainly the one in the pocket.

There's a dull roar of a plane with people on it flying ahead and I can’t help but think about how none of them feel the way that I do. There’s also coffee cooking somewhere which made me feel something good before her, less good during our thing- and in some way now is only coming across as this harsh chemical burn. I suppose all things just become chemical compounds when you’re stripped of all the life in your chest. And I’m feeling this need now to reorganize it all, which has to be the worst part. My apartment, my room, my car, my friends- it all. What even is my social ranking order now? Is my phone my best friend? Can that be a thing?

The neighbor is outside working on his truck, the same one I’d bring up in our lengthy conversations from states apart when her and I lost steam- or there was truly nothing left to be said. He’s been fixing and fixing and I just had the urge to open my window and say “Ooook give it up, Reid you fucking idiot!” Trust me, that would be like, really out of left field- because he’s such a nice guy and I’m nice to him back. He’d probably look at me and think I was joking and then I’d probably make a face to affirm that thought. But he is being an idiot? I watch him everyday fixing this thing, showing off his idiocy. I hope, for his own good, at some point someone, somewhere stops him- or the truck explodes. Whether he’s near it or not will be his own decision.

I’m looking at him evenly from this ground floor window, twisting something out of the engine, inspecting it, and putting it back. I wonder if his stomach is on fire like mine? Maybe that’s it, maybe we're all just walking around, distracting ourselves through different stages of heartbreak until we forget what it ever felt like, cause that’s sure how it seems right about now. Someone else loved that truck before him and has probably forgotten what it was like to drive it, at least I hope they did. Maybe I should tell him that?

All I want from this moment, from right now, is for it to be the way it was. The distance to that possibility is some back alley in a foggy wooded setting, which I’ve never seen, but that’s really all I can compare this to. There’s too much grey area to understate in this world that I’m fighting in and it seems to be the only place where true polar answers can't survive or be born. But I keep having this thought, this ugly one that I hate, where I think I would choose being one of the assholes that she loved so fiercely, through the abuse, over and over again. If not for the undying loyalty- then just to have a list of problems, an itemized list- that I could read and take home like homework, and justify the eternal end of this to myself. But there is no list, there's only the love between us and all the reasons we should be together fighting against this one undefeatable truth. And I’ve said I understand because I do, with all the rationale in the world, I promise I do. I’m not really sure what I’m asking for anymore- that's become clear in all these letters I haven’t sent. I guess I’m trying to decide if she loved me as deeply as I did her, or if she’s just choosing herself for the very first time. I really hope she’s just choosing herself.

I’m so sorry about this all the time, it’s been hard to believe that this isn’t going to end up the way I pictured it, that she isn’t who I am. I hear what she’s saying though, and I’m starting to convince my bones on it too. I understand the stuff about feeling herself dying everyday, because now that I’m going to sleep I feel the same way. I’m just lying here, wishing that when those pieces of hers are glued back together, they fit in my life like I always imagined, perfectly. This day ended like it started, and started like it never ended.