I dream you are dying

I dream you are dying.

Ischemic heart disease. Tuberculosis. Cerebrovascular disease. Aneurysm.

It doesn’t really matter how you die, just that you are dying.

I cry, but the tears feel fake.

Sloppy fat crocodile tears breaking on cold linoleum, splatter-splash, puddle forming til my socks soak right through, soggy sucker steps slipping, Alice’s unhappy tears flooding the hallway: a great big spaloosh.

Pushing shaking sobs out of heaving lungs, I try and try, but the real salt-lick tears never come.

Sitting in the cold and empty house on the day of your dream-death, I take stock of the life we never had: the junk drawer full of twist ties, and loose buttons, and rock hard mint candies in rip-torn wrappers, and elastic bands stretched and brittle, and faded ticket stubs, and crinkly old see-through rolling papers, and pieces of that broken mug we bought on vacation, the one we never glued back together, and phone numbers written on the back of old cigarette packs, written before I quit and after you told me you’d leave if I didn’t, and an old fortune from a cookie that reads “happiness is a direction, not a destination,” and the ratty old collar belonging to the big fat tabby who ran away and never came back.

I stare at your dying body, the way your face pulls taught over your bones like saran wrap stretched, and suddenly I can’t breathe.

Floating, I break through the front door, weeping wave flowing fast, a steady stream down Empty Street.

Outside, an endless palate of beige prefabricated cookie cut bi-levels and two stories and bungalows, gently rolling stucco and shingle and brick hills, young trees stretching soft bark toward a prairie sun disappearing, vanishing point pulled far off into the orange horizon: sleepy suburban streets stuck in a time long before you and I, abandoned bikes on lawns, lazy sprinklers tumbling, faint echoes of children laughing, this is an idyllic canvas: this is small town Alberta.

I peer into milk-yellow lit bay windows, undressed tempered glass leaving bare the stuff of Sunday dinners and quality family time. On the heels of dusk, I creep under carefully pruned perennials and sniff stale parochial air, trying to catch just a whiff of the way I remember you used to be, nostrils twitching in memory.

I try hard to imagine you before you were dying: pock-marked face, soft belly and doe eyes, unsure of you and me but sure never to grow old. I try hard to understand you: husband and father and all the things you said you’d be a long time ago when you were there with me, but I can’t quite call to mind your hands, spindly fingers bulging at the knuckle like gnarly trees roots, or the pitch of your voice, soft shale under the worn white rubber sole of a child’s running shoe, or just how tall you really were, knowing only that I fit the way I did, just under your sometimes scruffy but never bearded chin.

I can hear the old clock clanging, the cuckoo abandoned on the side of the road, laying face down in the ditch like a sad sex crime uncovered, on the day we fought: raised up voices and fists, torn open heart wounds left leaking, bad decisions made, and hurting you only because I wanted to be made to feel important and not like a backup plan, B to your A when things fell through.

One clang, two, three clang, four, then silence, dense as stale Christmas baking.

And like that, you are gone.

Air sucked out, lips left cracked, a shell of a man I remember you to be.

I dream you are dead.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Want to

I want to speak to you in a foreign language that rolls off my tongue like liquid honey, sticky amber dripping; while you calculate verb conjugations, I will smile the way I do, the way you hate: crooked and half, uneven teeth peeking. I will wait for the sentiment to sink in, your etch-a-sketch face showing the hard work of derivations inflected: me and you and the way back then of a sad day in spring, the so on and the so forth, the forgotten few words lost between lovers when the rhythm of you carried through me and we were electricity.

I want to paint words on your skin; careful vocabulary mapping the lengths we’ve traveled together, world weary feet dragging, grease painted skin shining, scribbled pocket maps crumpled and tearing, sweat-wet ink running: the stuff of everyday adventures.

I want to wear your love like a threadbare cardigan, timeworn holes in elbows and along the collar, down-at-the-heel threads waving spent surrender, the kind of wrinkled resilience of a 100 year old woman on the dawn of her last day: both assured and fragile, strong and tired, lifefull and fleeting; buttons hanging tired, matching holes stretched sideways, those buttons that saw the world change a little more and a little more but never grew tired of pulling you inside their snug hug, fastening you into the safety of threads fit just for you.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Under the Umbrella

‘Not ever seen anything like it,’ a sigh sagging his worn wrinkled face, hand on paint-splattered cargo pant hip, his name stitched in careful cap letters on the breast of his navy union prescribed collared shirt

A slow head shake,  ‘No, can’t say I ever have.’

‘Watch out for the broccoli,’ he hollers as you pass through the door of your highrise home.

Flowerettes flying – dietary fibre meeting uncertain fates on the sidewalk seven stories down, a rain of smashed steamed greens pattering the pavement.

Just another work-a-day week downtown.

On the train, eyes still sleep glazed and heavy, you are sardined: tin can trundling, day break peaking over sloped lows of the North Saskatchewan, you and the masses together alone.

Beside you, a toothless longhaired quipping free-and-easy beatnik philosophy, his wind as long as his unkempt dreads dragging below his knees, blond and ratty.

‘Those things real, man?’ A kid in a recovered army coat, hair slicked back, tall boots shining.

‘Sure, they’re real. This whole experience is real. I’m just here, living the real life, you know? We just here for one reason, man, we just here for one thing and one thing only: to love god, to love each other and to live the real life. You living the real life, man?’

A shrug, a sideways smile creeping: ‘sure man, yeah. I’m living the real life.’

‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ spray of spittle escaping excited gums flapping.

‘The real life, man. This real life. That’s what I’m talking about.’

A shudder stop at the station, strangers shuffling, side stepping interaction, heads down, sure steps up and out and on to the next stale quarterly budget meeting, policy work group, standards review committee.

The real life. Eight hours a day, five days a week.

On the walk home, G-love wearing pants slung low, ball cap twisted obscure, pock-marked face evidence of picked over acne, fat skate shoes dragging on afternoon sidewalks, sharing a smoke with the homeless man who lives under the 104st pedway, layers ratted and holey, one more layer to cover one more hole.

Sharing a smoke back and forth, they talk.

‘How you stay so healthy?’ a shaking hand moving smoke from hand to lips,  weather beaten and life-tired face asking.

‘It’s real easy, man, youth speaking wisdom. I jus’ smoke the good stuff, eat real good, sleep when I’m tired, not work too hard, you know how it is.’

‘No,’ down-and-out doesn’t know.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Outta’ve Rima

It’s the same day your train switches tracks and comes nose to nose with the southbound car, a slow shudder bumper lick shaking up sleeping passengers: small oomphs of surprised air pushed out of tired lungs on the long haul home after a tense workday – the very same day your boss is escorted by security out of the office for taking unsolicited photos of female staffers.

Exiting the wrong side of the tracks you see, lying still on the train station platform, a woman: big moon face puffy blue and slicked shiny with sweat, strands of dull gray hair caught in the crevices of a worn wrinkled forehead as emergency medical staff pump fists into her chest, begging her – Ma’am, please breath, c’mon ma’am, we need you to breath, while security guards direct gawkers to the farthest exit, yelling irony away: there’s nothing to see here folks, move along now.

It’s the same day you come home to your stale gray concrete 14 story complex, single-serving groceries in hand, cans of tuna for the cat clanging a soft chime soundtrack matched by the percussive rhythm of your dragging footsteps carried on the cracked soles of your swear-I’ll-replace-’em-before-the-snow-flies-toe-worn-through-boots only to find the fire department fishing the metal bed frame belonging to your upstairs neighbour from the bare branches of a gracefully aging birch, bedclothes sad satin streamers sailing toward the icy parking lot, rip-torn 300 count waving surrender for the fight she had with her bully boyfriend the whole night through, snippets of shouts sneaking their way into your dreams despite the pillow pulled tight over sleeping ears.

It’s the same day you think to yourself: it can’t get much stranger than this, no I doubt much it can.

But then life happens.

xoxo

M.L. H’art