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By Courtney Date: 2001 Sep 06 Comment on this Work [[2001.09.06.17.47.30696]] |
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I walk around with ghosts ahead of me and behind me. Pieces of my old life with him. Pictures of how it used to be. This is my new life: I push pain away all day, and the moment I put my arms down it walks into me and has a seat. The knowledge walks up your backbone. You stare at the man you love and you are staring at nothing: He is gone before he's gone. I don't blame Mike for leaving me. I would like to leave me too. I would like to step into the body of a woman who doesn't get lost going around the block, who doesn't smell like garlic 3 days after eating it, who can make conversations with his friends instead of sitting in the bathroom finding things to play with in my purse. Whenever the phone rings, I answer it like the rescuers have appeared in a helipcopter above me and are lowering the rope. It is never the rescuers. How can people that are together for so long ever take their clothes off in front of anyone else?? How can there be anyone else? The hands would be wrong. The face. The smell. You'd open your eyes from a kiss and...what? No map. I am horrified. somewhere over my head, a miniature version of myself looks down in disgust, hands on hips head shaking. Abandonment again. Perhaps this will be a condition, like anemia: Chronic Abandonment. |