cravenly

When I sleep, I dream of her.

In my waking life, I swear to never indulge that kind of obsession again, to never fall prey to temptation and addiction and hallucination again. I won't do it, I won't bear the pain, or the loss.

But I do bear it, the worst of it, over and over.

I bury her every night.

I relive her death every night.

Sleep or no sleep, moon or no moon, I lower a cheap pine box into the ground, with numbers on it instead of a name. I throw a handful of dirt and rose petals on top. I say my goodbyes, quietly tearful some nights, hysterical and violent on others. I say goodbyes that I never got to tell her, and things I didn't think of until she was already gone. some nights they're hardly goodbyes at all, just accusations and insults born of confusion and hurt and lonely, lonely, lonely...  I trudge off, turning my back on the hole that my heart lives in now.

And then I wake up and the mourning is fresh. The grief is as raw as it ever was. Imogene, my Imogene, is a memory. A tri-fold pamphlet with an outdated picture and a poem I didn't write.

She's as gone as she ever was.

...which is to say, she isn't gone.  At all. Not really.

Now she's the wind that turns my hair unruly. She's the rain that runs slick down my up-turned face, dragging ribbons of mascara with her. She's the ache in my stomach.

She's a ghost, silent and cold, descending from her watchful spot on the ceiling in a haze of TV static. On nights I can't sleep, she settles on my skin like mist so she can weep into my pores while I lay there and stew. So she can gather in the corners of my eyes, pool in the hollows of my collarbone. So she can work her oppressive chill into my sheets and pillows, grind into my mattress with every fretful toss and regretful turn. On nights I can sleep, she lays next to me like a thick blanket of fog, watching my eyes twitch under their lids as I dream of her funeral again and again.

Why do you keep burying me? she asks. I'm right here, she insists. She walks next to me at the supermarket, sits by my side at dinner, politely requesting attention in her quiet, unassuming way.

I walk.
I chew.
I smile, swallow, laugh.

I'm the only one that sees her.

When she loops her icy arms around me in the middle of a crowded room, I stiffen and excuse myself to collect my bearings. It's difficult to hold a conversation with an honest-to-goodness person when the dead half of your soul is draped around you, nipping at your throat, begging for kisses. 

I often ignore her.  I more often can't.

When I'm leaning over the sink, staring at myself in the mirror through a matted curtain of snarled hair, she sits on the counter next to the tap and brushes it out of my eyes with cool fingers, just like she always did.  Sometimes the lavender is so strong it makes me gag, and I double over and spit things I don't mean across the faucet, watch things I do mean circle the drain.  She rubs my back and holds my hair to the side.  Sometimes I get fed up, and whirl on her in a fury, matching her coolness with a heat of my own.  "Why are you doing this?" I'll hiss at her.  "You're dead.  You're gone.  So just fucking go." Sometimes she just looks at me sadly and fixes my collar, tucks my bangs behind my ear.  Sometimes she opens her mouth to respond, but I can't hear her because somebody else has come into the room and asks me, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

She's right in front of them, the most beautiful thing they could ever hope to see, and nobody sees her.

I do.

I turn the water off, pull my hair up, and check my face one final time before I turn out the lights.

I'm late for a funeral.