It’s weird how embarrassing and unembarrassed being sad makes you. It’s hard to care about things, superficial things. So I have a stain on my pants, big deal. Mascara smeared under my eyes can stay smudged there for hours - haha days - before I notice.
I have a great pouring empathy for everyone. I recognize sadness in people, like a sixth sense. I even feel compassion and love for the people who hate me, all I want to do is put my arms up in an x and beg their forgiveness for my trespasses and please just stop being a hard place you don’t have to be a soft place for me to land you can step out of the way but don’t let me shatter myself against you. I feel a bit like a turtle on its back, unable to defend myself even when I deserve to. Everything frightens me and it all comes back to how can you be gone.
When I saw that last picture, you emaciated, I was filled with a terrible tenderness for you, a desire to touch you, bathe you, dress you. Even after we were separated we touched a lot - I’d shave your head, #2 on the razor, getting good at trimming your neck, and also doing a little upper back hair grooming for you while we were at it. I think we both felt comforted by these rituals, like nothing could truly be completely wrong, if I could cup the back of your head in my palm while guiding the clippers upward and over your ear in a swoop then we were still connected in some fundamental way.
The condo where I did all of this shaving and trimming is for sale - the entire building, not just our old unit. The whole place is being painted, today when I drove by it is dressed in primer white, even the trim. It is like a big blank slate again, ready to receive the next couple rounding the corner. I can picture us, out for a walk while vacationing, and you seeing the For Rent sign out front and J., a stranger then, standing on the stoop smoking. We chatted, she let us in to see the place and by the end of the next day we had a rental agreement. Our dear little H. died there; for the longest time I sensed his spirit behind me, while I’d be writing. Remember you driving up, just arrived from an international trip, hopping out of a taxi and looking up to see me standing in the doorway, my arms folded, crying. You missed his last breath by just three hours.
I feel a tug when I think of that place, how much of a transition it represented in our lives, first renting it, then later buying it, and all the parts of our lives that launched from that point. Now K. is gone, you are gone, I am the only witness to the fun and love that we filled that place with, and maybe an echo of our past happiness is still there, the building itself in its coat of primer paint like a ghost in the night.