Aide Memoire

Like most traumatic events in my life…I don’t really remember too much of you.

Occasionally, your scent will stir a memory of you at my back, legs wrapped in confusion…arms and hands exchanged.

Every once in a while, I will remember the deep blue of your eyes and the slick of your skin on my fingers. I might envision the slender curve of your torso and the delicateness of your hands.

Now and again, I might picture your nervousness and raw emotion on our wedding day… recalling the way you seemed different to me somehow...

Sometimes, I try to envision what it would look like if you were here now…how you might fit in with all that is me now…but that’s where it starts to hurt….so I stop.

…And then there are days when the idea of you makes my chest burn and my eyes ache as my cheeks moisten with a fluid I try not to acknowledge…days when I look at myself and feel lost…trying not to feel shame for what I am…for who we have become.

And on nights like tonight, when the moon is full and the dog is sleeping crossways in the bed, inhibiting my feet from reaching the cool emptiness of the exposed bottom…I almost forget that you’re not there at my back…I am almost compelled to turn over in bed and snuggle into the musk of your t-shirt…kiss the length of your neck and slide my hand lazily onto your belly as I listen to the heaviness of your breathing…

But I lay here, alone, in the expanse of this bed…in the emptiness of this room…in the openness of this cabin…pondering what is next.