....a slight piece of fiction i thought about on the shuttle to phoenix.
She stood on the balcony with an assortment of recycleable material and thought about which new craft project to conquer. She sorted the brown glass from the clear and the newspaper from the brightly colored junkmail. She thought about crafting a vase or a lamp. She threw the colored paper around in a cirlce around her and waited for the color scheme to jump out at her. Nothing came. She sat some more and thought about the other materials she had in her closet. What else could she use? What else could she make? She wanted to do something unpredictable, something new. Still, nothing came. She listened to 4 different kinds of music to get her in the right mood. Chingy, Ani, Garth, and Frank. Her usuals just weren't doing it for her. She was stuck in an uncomfortable place between the old and the new.
Instead of trying to force some sort of artistic genius, she decided to let it come organically. So, she laid down, right where she was, on the cold cement of the apartment complex balcony and listened to the neighbors selections of day time television, the street cats fighting, and the noise of traffic and railroad crossings. She stayed there for a full episode of days of our lives which she could hear from her roommates window. She used to watch that with her love, in the middle of the day on fridays with takeout from their favorite greasy diner.
It made her furious. she had given so much up for her, only to be left in a pile of rubble with nothing substantial to stand upon. This is why she crafted. Arts and crafts were theone distraction that made her feel slightly more whole. She started breaking the bottles on the cement with her palms and watched her hands bleed from the slivers of glass that worked their way into her skin. She still didnt know what to make or what colors to use, but it didnt matter. With each drop of blood that gathered in a pool on the cement, she started to feel slightly more alive. on top of the dark red pool, tears bounced. She didnt realize that she was still this sad over her love. maybe the tears werent for her love; maybe they were for herself.
With every phone call that they shared over the last quarter year, her heart broke all over. She woke up every morning and startd putting her self together, one leg at a time, like putting on pants. She would work the pain out of her body throughout the day and get all the way up to her heart and then her love would call to talk about the day. Only they wouldn't talk. They sat in silence because no one knew what to say. When they saw each other, the closeness broke her heart even more, so she spewed nasty onelines about her love and turned into the bitch she hated being. There was nothing left in her soul but lonliness. In one conversation she lost her future, which had so neatly mapped out. The children, career, home, and vacations were gone. That's the problem with love; when you are consumed in it, there is no planning for natural distasters or changes of heart. Her sobs subsided and turned into screams. She yelled at the trees and the cats down below. She screamed at the clouds for bringing rain that day and at the sun for blowing her off. Although she as screaming, no one rushed out of their doors to check the problem. Her neighbors stayed tucked in their nests and her friends were time-zones away. She had moved for her love and was now completely alone.
She wiped the last tears from her cheeks and boldly stood up. There was no one pulling her up or giving her a hand. For the first time, the lonliness felt reassuring rather than dark. She wispered a secret into the mouth of each bottle and said goodbye to it before she threw it over the balcony and listened to the glass shatter on the pavement. She did it again. And again. And again. Still no one bothered her. She got to be by herself and have the cathartic moment she was craving. By the time she broke the last bottle it was well into the evening and time for the ritualistic phone call from her demon lover. When the phone rang she picked it up and said, "you need to come over. i have something to tell you. Bring a case of corona."
A while later her demon lover knocked on the door. "what happened outside?" She reached out for the beer and her demon lover grabbed her hands; "what happened to your hards?"
"you." she replied. She walked out the door with the beer in her hand and went towards the mess. "This is what i need to tell you." They stood there for a moment, nose to nose, uncomfortably silent as she searched her demon lover's eyes for the strength to move on. Slowly she picked a beer out fo the case and threw it over her shoulder. The bottle made a deeper, more full-bodied noise as it hit the pavement.
"That is what you do to me." She whispered then repeated at the top of her lungs. The screaming was healing. "LET ME GO." She explained her daily ritual of gluing pieces of a human vase with the rise of the sun and then smashing it into a million smaller pieces each evening. "I need to be whole. I won't let you destroy me. i'm taking control." She took another bottle out of the case, un-capped it and took one long drink, whispered a secret into the neck and smashed it onto the ground at their feet. "I was fine before you and i will be fine after you." She stood in a locked gaze and in silence. "let me go. dont call me. dont text me. dont write me. think about me and think about everything you just lost. think about how much pain I am going through. Think about how you did it. Think about how i am moving on. Think about whatever you want to think about, but dont think about making your shit and chaos my problem. Talk to whomever you want, but dont talk to me. I dont want to care anymore."
She threw 6 more bottles over board. "I love you." she yelled as the first one fell to the ground. she yelled one word with each of the remaining 5. "But i love myself more." She turned to her demon lover who had tears running down their face. "I had no clue-" She stopped the sentence with a defiant smash "NO," she yelled "NO MORE FROM YOU." It was like a ghost entered the conversation as all of the air was sucked from both of them. "no more" she whimpered and went inside leaving her demon lover and the ghost of heartbreak on the porch. they were left to tend to eachother, but she had herself to lean on. She had a new world to explore full new dark corners of new lovers' bodies. But before that could happen, she had to rediscover her own soul.
She threw one more thing away; the sentence "i need you." she had everything she needed.
