Chapter 1
You stopped by this morning. I know you did because the label was peeled off the milk, and I found it in the trash with your fingernail markings all over it.
And when I’m off to work, I come home and the pillow is flipped. I know you sleep there, and I keep it flipped when I go to bed at night and smell you, that last dying hint of musk.
And you left your palm print against the refrigerator door, as you leaned against it to open the trash compactor.
I know you were here this morning while I slept, and when I stalked from the living room into the kitchen and back through the bedroom, I could feel your ghost drifting through me.
And I’m also in love with you.
This afternoon I walked from the house to the park. Last time I talked to you about it you said it was such a long walk that you didn’t think I could do it. I’ve never been very active, but I wish you had more faith in me. Maybe you do, and I don’t see it, perhaps it was a warning. I don’t know. I don’t know much. I don’t know. Maybe.
The walk beat me down, and when I got back I fell against the door frame and my stomach hurt, but not from walking. My stomach hurt because I miss you. You never say hello, and you never leave a note. You are just here when I am asleep, or if I am gone. I don’t call out sick or come home early for fear that you may be angry with me.
You left hair on the comb and I picked it out and set it aside in a drawer because it’s almost you. And I started brushing with your toothbrush. The bristles are harder than I like, and it makes my gums bleed a bit every time. They get sore and bleed. I get scared of my own blood when I see it, but I keep brushing because you said the hard bristles make your gums stronger. The bleeding, you say, is good. I keep brushing because I miss your teeth.
I wrote you a poem when I got home from work yesterday and it was gone from the refrigerator door when I woke up, and that’s how I know you were here.
I sent you a letter in the mail and it never came, so that’s how I know you go through the mailbox. Your bills never show up, your credit card statements never arrive, your million dollar winning envelopes stopped coming.
I still inhale.
I found the pornography you keep under the bed, and flipped through the magazines and masturbated to the photographs inside. People were touching each other in places I couldn’t reach on my own, and you loved to look at them do it. I cried when I came and I didn’t bother putting the magazine away before I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was under the covers in my bedclothes and I think you did it because the magazines all were gone. Even the one I had masturbated to was missing, and I want to find your new hiding spot. I want to see those people again, with their lips and tongues and their faces masks of pleasure, dying.
I want to see you one more time. You never show up, but you always pat me on the head while I sleep. I know because my hair used to never be matted when I woke up, it would always be everywhere.
I want to touch you one more time, and maybe do to you those things you seem to like. Maybe give you that part of me I never gave to anyone. Maybe kiss that spot on you that hasn’t ever been kissed. I’d like to do that to you, and have you do it back. Maybe you’d like it too? I don’t know. No. No nevermind, I can’t do that, you don’t want it, do you?
That’s why you hid the magazines.
I’m sorry.
I should never have gone through your stuff. It was stupid of me. I was just feeling so lonely, so fragile, so scared.
I was feeling so out of sorts. My head hasn’t been in the same place it normally is. Can you forgive me? I know I found the magazine. I know I should have left it where it was, and never touched it, never looked.
I know I should stop sleeping in your bed.
I know I shouldn’t brush my teeth with your brush or keep your hair in my drawer.
I’m so fucking sorry, it’s so fucking hard.
Where are you?
Please.
Please come back, I don’t know what to do. Don’t go.
I sometimes like to reattach the label on the milk, hoping you’ll take it off again, but you always wait until I buy a new one.