Without Him

Her hips grind, pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves. Whenever he pulls out… loss. Dear moon, we blame you for floods… for the flush of blood… for men who are also wolves. We blame you for the night, for the dark, for the ghosts.

– Beyonce
Emptiness from Lemonade
Adapted from Dear Moon by Warsan Shire

A friend of mine has goddesses tattooed large, taking up her outer thighs, Kwan Ying on one side and Kali Ma on the other. I have never seen a better representation of what it is to be a woman. My rage runs as deep as my mercy. Still, knowing this, he chose to bury himself deep in the divinity of my thighs. Did he think that he could choose which parts of me he received? 

I tried to go to bed without him, but the thought “without him” coagulated, forming a lump in my throat. I was used to going to bed without his body next to mine, though not in this room. In this room, I had slept alone maybe a few nights before his arrival, a few nights after he left, or the weekdays between our weekends. I had only slept in this bedroom as part of being with him. It was never my bed without being ours. Even when he stood me up, he was always why I was in that room. Still, it wasn’t his body that was missing from me. 

I was realizing I would have to go to bed without him, without the thought that he was out there somewhere, my best friend, my love, my peace, my home. He was just down the hall, but it could have been another planet. Where I would normally tuck myself in with prayers and wishes and thoughts of him, something inside of me kept insisting, “it’s over.” Over and over, “it’s over.” 

I couldn’t get into that bed where he was supposed to be with me, where he had had me so many times. Lights out, fan on, I sat in the chair and stared through the emptiness of our bed. I took off my hat and work keys and threw them at the french doors across the room. The room remained indifferent. I pinched my arm and tried to wake up. I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. The voice somewhere inside me kept saying, “it’s over.” I tried to drown it out, “no, no, no, no, no…” Completely still on the outside, I was frantically arguing with myself inside. Nothing changed. It’s over.

I couldn’t get into our bed, haunted by the love we’d made. Damn him. I couldn’t even lie down on that floor without ghosts of goodnights past. Seven acres and nowhere I wouldn’t think of him, his smile, his laugh, those eyes. My throat kept getting tighter. I thought maybe I would suffocate. I thought maybe I wanted to. I’m tired of things that do not kill me. Fuck being strong. I just want to be loved. Without that, what’s the point in anything else?

I don’t know how long I sat there motionless in the dark, fighting with what I knew, with what I didn’t know, with the tightening of my throat and my resistance to all of it. How do you fight against the absence of someone who chooses to be elsewhere? I wanted the breakup to not really be there, like he had not really been there, like I no longer wanted to really be there. 

I prayed for him to come in the door and take me to bed. How many times had he taken me there in that room? The times when he was so impatient, he grabbed me before I could even shower off the plaster and the sweat? How many times had there been just one more time? He used to be so eager to be alone with me. How could he be so cold now? What happened? What had I done wrong? How was I going to fix it? I had to fix it. Still, the voice kept saying, “it’s over.” 

I tried to scream through my tightening throat, reject that voice of doubt, and expel the breakup from my lungs. I tried to move my anguish outside of me. Something tore out of me, but it was not a scream. There was silence. Too much silence. Like the world had paused under the weight of my grief. The fan above my head slowed in its rotation. I realized the power had gone out. The silence was not for his absence but rather from the absence of the electric hum of fans, lights, and appliances throughout the house. 

The stillness of the room was too much without the fan. I grabbed my phone charger and left for the bookstore. If I ran into anyone else, wandering about (unlikely in the Saturday night portion of Sunday morning), I could just say the power had gone out in the building where I was staying. I was just looking for a place to charge my phone and not running away from a knowing inside of me that kept saying it was over, even as I begged for it not to be.  The building with the bookstore didn’t have power either. 

The whole campus was blacked out. It seemed fitting. The power should be out. I cursed the rest of the neighborhood for continuing to glow as if the world wasn’t ending. I tried to pick a fight with the moon waxing near fullness. Let it come at me, thrust itself all the way into the Earth, destroying both heavenly bodies and me, especially me. I know I can live through this, but I didn’t know that I wanted to. I am so sick and tired of being strong. The only reward for my resilience seems to be more things to be resilient through. Screw that. I want to be safe, to love someone who doesn’t hurt me. 

I wandered the campus feeling empty, inside out, like a costume peeled off and discarded. Maybe my soul had come out of me instead of a scream. I pinched myself. I did not wake up. This was really happening even though I didn’t want it to. If I was real, I could be seen. Administrative staff wandering the campus predawn, not sure what’s real, is probably not peak professionalism.

So, I hid in a brick dome with the black widows. I wished I was born to a species wise enough to eat its males after mating. I hated him. I loved him. I wanted to crash into the room where he was sleeping and demand that he love me. I wanted to take back having ever loved him, having ever met him. I wanted to return to how I felt when I woke up Friday morning, so in love and full of squee that I’d be spending the weekend with my man. How long had I been looking forward to that weekend? I was supposed to be talking to him about moving in together, or at least about my moving to San Diego. I was not supposed to be spending Saturday night like this. Alone.

The moonlight poured in through the open top of the brick dome, too bright for me to see any stars to wish on, even during the peak of the Perseid showers. Afraid someone might hear me crying, I crept back to our bedroom. I sat in the chair, unable to tolerate the emptiness of our bed. I cursed the part of me that had ever loved him. Such a stupid girl, loving like I could be loved back.

I nodded off. I woke up, but our bed was still empty. I became a ghost cursing the memories still alive between those walls. I nodded off. The fan came back on. The sun dared to rise. Morning trespassed into my grief. I got dressed, went through the motions, went to work, and waited for him to tell me what was going on. 

Ya me canso de llorar y no amanece

Ya no sé si maldecirte o por ti rezar

Tengo miedo de buscarte y de encontrarte

Donde me aseguran mis amigos que te vas

Hay momentos en que quisiera mejor rajarme

Y arrancarme ya los clavos de mi penar

Pero mis ojos se mueren sin mirar tus ojos

Y mi cariño con la aurora te vuelve a esperar

– Chavela Vargas
Paloma Negra

Translation:

I’m tired of crying, and it doesn’t dawn
I don’t know whether to curse you or pray for you
I’m afraid to look for you and to find you
Where my friends assure me that you are going
There are moments in which I would like better to shred myself
And tear out the nails of my sorrow
But my eyes die without looking at your eyes
And my love with the dawn waits for you again