--THERE’S NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO

                                                            The Clean White Pieces

 

            He watches his mother stare at the paring knife, squinting, staring a bit too long, puzzled by something having to do with the blade, or maybe she’s summoning past events, perhaps future ones.

            The boy, her son, her only living relative now, sits like a thin piece of driftwood on the vinyl chair.  Inside his mind he sees a sign.  It reads: RUN. 

But he never can.

When she walks around the counter and comes over to him, the boy’s heart is shooting rivers of blood through his organs.  She has the knife in her hands.  She moves it into the air.  It swings slowly.  Comes to rest a few inches from his face.  “Is that rust?  Can you see it?” she asks.

There’s no rust.  The metal gleams beautiful silver.  It is so clean it is almost white, white like everything else in this house, this kitchen—the cabinets and counters, the tiled floors, the ceramic dishes and porcelain cups.

“No, Mom.”

She jiggles the knife.  “Look closer.”

She must want him to see it.  His father had a spot on the back of his leg.  It was the shape of a jagged dime.  He scratched it a lot.  It got darker and swelled, grew into a big patch on his calf.  By the time he actually went to the hospital, the melanoma had leeched into so many places that the boy’s father died four days later.

Since then his mother is afraid of blemishes, stains, rust spots.  She has even shaved her eyebrows because she thought she saw the beginnings of a mole under the cilia-like brow.

“Well?” she asks, still waiting.

“Maybe a little.”

“Ha!  I knew it.”

While she scours the knife over running water, the boy thinks thinks thinks.  He is thinking but no fully-formed thoughts are showing up.  It’s just panic jabbing him with a molten prod.

He is twelve and hairless beneath his school clothes.  His mother makes him shower first thing every morning.  She inspects his body while it’s not even dry.  He knows now to pluck any hair that might appear because she gets disgusted if she finds one, looking at him suspiciously as if it might be the root of some burgeoning evil. 

At the door she stops him and he knows what to do without asking.   He parts his lips wide.  “They’re getting yellow already.  No more soda pop for you, and twenty extra minutes of brushing tonight.”

He nods and waits to be excused, wondering if she’s put back the knife, if it’s clean enough for her, if it will ever be.

She wrinkles her lips.  That is good.  That’s her way of kissing him goodbye without having to touch him.

                                                ***

Now it’s decades later.  The woman is dead by her own hand because of having sliced perceived moles from her back, shoulders, legs and bleeding out.

But she lives.  The boy who is a man can’t shake her entirely.  She is there in his nightmares, in sun-streaks that white-out portions of a window or his vision, in the blackest migraines that turn blinding white.

He watches his twins jump into a mud puddle, globs of thick, soupy dirt splattering their pink leggings and jackets.  They do it again and again, the mess worse each time.

“Eva!  Ruby!” his wife shouts, but he takes her hand decisively, holds it to his lips and says, “No.  It’s okay.  Really.  Let them.”

 

 

--DEAD OR ALIVE, IT STILL COUNTS.  RIGHT?

…How’s your middle of the week looking?  Mine is sunny and smoky.

Here are a few things I learned of late…

 -Over 465,000 children were reported missing in the US last year

-Nationwide, 2017 is shaping up to be Mexico’s most murderous year ever. There were more than 12,000 homicides in the first six months, including 2,234 in June, the highest monthly total on record

Mexico is reaching its deadliest point in decades. Even with more than 100,000 deaths, 30,000 people missing and billions of dollars tossed into the furnace of Mexico’s decade-long fight against organized crime, the flames have not died down.
May and June, the latest months available, set consecutive records for the most homicide scenes in the last 20 years.

-More than 2 billion adults and children globally are overweight or obese and suffer health problems because of their weight, a new study reports.

This equates to one-third of the world's population carrying excess weight, fueled by urbanization, poor diets and reduced physical activity.

The United States has the greatest percentage of obese children and young adults, at 13%, while Egypt led in terms of adult obesity, with almost 35%, among the 195 countries and territories included in the study.

While 2.2 billion people were obese or overweight in 2015, more than 710 million of them were classed as obese, with 5% of all children and 12% of adults fitting into this category.
An increasing number globally are dying from health problems linked to being overweight, such as cardiovascular disease.
Read More

Almost 40% of the 4 million dying as a result of their higher body mass index were not yet obese, highlighting that deaths are occurring almost as often in those considered overweight as those considered obese.

...And here are a few things I like midweek...

-"Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself."- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

-"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

-"Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best."- David O. McKay

-"It is wonderful to be in on the creation of something, see it used, and then walk away and smile at it."- Lady Bird Johnson

-"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."- Mary Lou Cook

 

 

 

--THE OCEAN WHISPERS LIKE A GREEN, SILK DRESS

 

                                                    The Confidence of Strangers

 

She couldn’t get the answers she wanted, so she fled, left her baby with her husband while trying not to think ill of herself.   She drove all night.  It felt good to be alone for once, no squawking infant, no berating husband calling her names like filthy and whale and beluga whale.

She had breakfast at a diner that smelled of bacon grease, toast and ammonia.  It looked like something out of the fifties, the waitress with her red and white gingham checked dress. 

A man at another booth kept staring at her.  It felt odd and unsettling but also refreshing.  It’d been a long time since anyone had seemed to notice her.

After a while, he came over and slid across the slick plastic seat on the opposite side.  He did this without asking permission, which was something her husband would have done, though now she welcomed the confidence of this stranger.

“You aren’t from around here, are you?”

She nodded.  It had been over a day since she’d uttered a single sound and still she didn’t feel like speaking, not yet.

“You the mysterious type?”

She nodded no again.

“Shy then, I see.”

She was shy when she was a young girl, easily trampled and fooled.  She went mute for two whole years and her mother made her pay for her silence each of those days.  Her mother’s favorite weapons were hat pins and a man’s long, leather belt.

The stranger watched her eat, staring as if she was performing a magic trick or something even more provocative such as masturbating for his pleasure.

When he started to introduce himself, she held up her hand like a stop sign.  No names.

After the waitress brought her check, the stranger withdrew his wallet and paid.  It was clear he wanted something in return and she wasn’t sure if she would oblige him.  Going out the diner, he took her hand in his.  Holding hands.  It made her feel girlish and wanted.

“You smell good.  Like flowers.”

She knew she didn’t, that he was making it up, but she didn’t care.

She walked with him through the parking lot toward the rear where they came to a large semi.

“This is mine.  I call her Pearl.”

The vehicle’s exterior was surprisingly clean given the winter slush on the roads.

“Wanna hop in?”

When he opened the door, she grabbed a handle and pulled herself up and the stranger got in on the other side and they both closed their doors.

“I like your sense of adventure.”

She wasn’t sure how this would play out, nor did she allow her mind to process any of the potential consequences. 

“Well, what’ll we do now?” he said, grinning, eager.

Behind the seats was a small area she guessed he used for sleeping on long drives.  He pulled the curtain aside and motioned and she went there with him.

He was gentle yet frantic, his mouth and fingers everywhere all at once.  He kept saying, “God but you’re a stunner.”

She climaxed without making a sound.  Silence was the only real weapon she possessed. 

He took out his wallet and handed her fifty dollars.  She must have looked surprised because he pulled out two fives.

“I run through here every second Tuesday,” he said.  “I hope to see you again.”

She left the truck without fanfare and walked to her car not feeling anything, or feeling dull and dead again.  The pleasure she’d felt now seemed like a trick, so fleeting.

She got out and paced back and forth in front of the diner.  It didn’t take more than thirty minutes before a stranger came out and said, “You looking for a date?”

When she nodded, he took her hand.

 

 

 

--SENTIMENTAL GEEK, SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP

 

                                                               Flight Risk

 

I am six and I am sad and I am on an airplane by myself because Mother has sent me away again, this time to Uncle Daryl’s farm in North Dakota where there are more cows than people and where Uncle Daryl will make me cut my hair, put on overalls and tell me, Toughen up, Little Shit, even though I am six and a girl.

The lady, Susan, with the blue uniform and name tag seems nice and I want to ask her if she’s a mother and if she ever sends her children away whenever she brings a man over for a long stay, but I’m too shy and nervous and my stomach is growling like the mean black lab the neighbors have and I’m worried the fat-bellied man next to me will hear.  I don’t want him to notice my stomach sounds or me at all but he keeps stealing looks whenever I open up my Anne of Green Gables book.  I don’t know much but I know it’s best to stay away from men because a lot of them are bad men who want things they shouldn’t.  The fat-bellied man is so large his thick, hairy forearms are almost over in my seat, same as his gut which is pushing hard against his shirt buttons.  If he touches me for real or even says anything I am going to scream until the lady, Susan, comes.

I have seventy-five dollars rolled up inside my knee highs.  Ten of it came from Mother and the rest from Pop Pop, my grandad who likes to call me Fruit Loop and pat my bottom.  I’ve never had so much money in my life and it makes me nervous though I am rich now and should be feeling on top of the world.

From my window seat I can see the land below so flat and neatly scarred up, laying there like the stretched out animal hides Mother’s last boyfriend had hanging in the basement where all the crates of puppies were lined up one after the other, cute puppies mewling like they wanted out in a hurry, which I couldn’t blame them. 

I don’t understand how airplanes work, all these people on board, all this weight lifted up into the sky, but then I don’t understand a lot of things like why I haven’t started first grade or why Mother calls me “special” then laughs and laughs, especially when she’s drunk, which is most of the time.

The lady, Susan, comes down the aisle and asks if everything’s all right, so I nod and try to make my lips grin, though I’m not sure if it works.  She says we’re going to land soon, which makes me even more nervous.

I look out the little door window again and find a cloud that looks like a floating elephant.  I give it the special power of granting wishes and I cheat and make it grant me one and so now I know it’s okay to get a cab at the airport instead of calling Uncle Daryl as I’ve been instructed.  I’ll be strong and sure for once and tell the cabbie to take me to a place where they treat little girls nice.  I’ll give him a big tip if he does.  Then when I get there I’ll show the kind people some of my scars.  I’ll tell how I got them.  I’ll tell them all the other stuff, too, even if it makes me cry.  Then I’ll say, “I’m not ever going back,” and I’ll really mean it this time.

 

 

--ARE WE WRITTEN IN THE STARS?

Making Beauty

Let’s make each other beautiful

The moon wants to be our chaperone
And the wind will serenade us
With her sweet songs
Come press your skin on mine
Do it anywhere please
Let’s kiss like we’re auditioning
For a marriage license
Tell each other why there’s a reason
The stars shine for us
Let’s start again
Everything on repeat or
New this time around
Let’s watch our souls coalesce as
We make each other beautiful
And immortal
 

 

Teenagers Kissing

I want to be kissed like that

Washed in moon glow
Under starlit jewelry
Head tilted to head
Lips pliant and resolved
To work as long as it takes
To convey that such a precious feeling
Is neither fleeting or fantasy
But rather the very thing that makes
Life worth living

I want to be kissed like that

By you
First mornings
Last nights
Over the phone
Under the table
Under a bridge
Under the underpass
Baby don’t see how badly
I wanted to be kissed by you

 

Firefly Hunting

And now we are nine or ten

And you are my first crush
Your little girl eyes big and brown as root beer
Your limbs still gangly but shorter of course
We’re out on someone’s lawn after dusk
Hunting fireflies with Mason jars
And butterfly nets
The air smells like lilacs and willow trees
It feels like a kitten brushing fur across our faces
Fluffy soft and nearly ticklish
You are so beautiful it hurts to look your way
For more than a second or two
“There’s one!” you say, your mouth dancing with glee
And it’s true
A squiggle of light flips across your head just out of reach
When I jump up and catch it
I feel brave for once
Almost grown up and responsible
A boy/man with bills to pay
In my palm the firefly glows like a premonition
Or luminous tarot card
With the words
SHE IS THE ONE FOR YOU
Written there
Only I can see it
The message meant for me
The way you are
The way you were
And always have been

 

Today

Today has taught me that

Today might not be enough
That we want more
That we are greedy by nature
And while I respect the wisdom of scripture
Love is not like the Bible tells us
Rather it is entirely jealous
Has to be
Ought to be
Love wants a second helping
A third and a fourth
Love will reach through the cracks
Of a rundown asphalt street
And grab you by the ankle
Because it is that thirsty or famished
Love will sit by a fire
Willing to throw itself atop the blaze
If that’s what you tell it to do
If that’s the only way you can keep warm
Love is a prism of duality and paradox
Both malleable and as solid as diamond
It is the one thing in life
That there is never enough of
The one thing I need
Most from you

 

 

 

 

                                                                   

--CONGRATULATIONS.  YOU REALLY HURT ME.

 

                                                              Last Words
 

Another one’s set to die today and as usual my stomach’s a swamp of nausea.  I forget I’ve poured a bowl of cereal, staring out the window at a wall of gray rain, hypnotized by nothing and everything, the way it feels when you’re in a broken marriage, and now my spoonful of Wheaties tastes like wet newsprint.

“You could get another job,” my husband says, reading my mind again which I hate because there are plenty of things I’d rather not have him knowing.  “It doesn’t pay squat anyway.”

So he says.  He always says.

We’ve got bills, a car loan, his big ass truck loan, can barely pay the minimum on our credit cards, with interest piling up every month, constantly gnawing at me like some hideous flesh-eating disease. 

Well, if Texas wants to kill again, someone’s got to be there to record it, and I’m their gal.

Far as I know we’re the only state that chronicles a condemned criminal’s last words.  It feels wrong, perverted, like watching your sibling undress, yet it’s legal and actually required.  I write down their final statement word for word and enter it into a computer where it sits in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice data base, free for anyone to see, though why on earth would they want to?

A lot of times the inmate thanks the Warden, which I don’t get.  He’s the one organizing your execution, and he’s looking the other way as he does it, which again is like being in a bad marriage where you know your spouse is cheating but you’re just too tired to fight, or too frail to run.

The other thing most of them do is say goodbye to friends and family, which is what you’d expect.  Sometimes they confess a secret sin they’ve been harboring and the relief on their face as they confess is the opposite of the death they’re facing, as if they’ve escaped from prison after all.

We’ve been married going on twelve years.  I suspect Darold’s philandering started about year seven which I know they say is when couples get the itch.  I never got that, though Darold did once give me the crabs.  Said it was from a toilet seat.  I looked it up on the internet and it’s a possibility, though slim as winning Powerball.

My sister, Arlene, doesn’t understand why I stay with him but she’s got a good man who still buys her yellow roses and gave her the one-of-kind nickname Renny, which I think is downright adorable, especially when he says it while fluffing up her mop of orange hair.  Darold’s called me Bitch more times than my own name, Tammy.  He’s come close, but he’s never hit me, so there’s that.

The thing Arlene doesn’t understand is how different we are, even though she and I are twins.  It’s like that line in the movie, “The Way We Were” where the teacher reads a winning story that Barbra Streisand is sure will be hers only it’s not, it’s Bob Redford’s with the opening line: “In a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came too easily to him.”  That’s Arlene to a t, though she don’t know it.  I’m not spiteful, but I’m not deaf, dumb and blind either.  Nearly every day, fruit falls into my sister’s lap, most of it golden apples.

It’s a bold risk, Darold telling me to quit my job since I know he lost his last week.  I didn’t even need to probe, since word flies around these parts like the wind.  Still Darold’s going to pretend for some reason.  He’s got his overalls on and I’ve packed his lunch pail and he’s out the door, saying “See ya tonight,” without mentioning what I’ve got to go through today or how hard it’s going to be.

Jackass.  I married a jackass.  I guess that makes me one, too.

I sit at the table, knowing I’ve got to get going while some of the inmates’ most recent entries flutter through my head like shutters banging in a storm.

“I’m ready to go home.”

 “To the victim’s family, I want you to know that I hope you let go of all the hate because of all my actions.  I came in as a lion and I go out as a peaceful lamb.”

“Tell them I finished strong.  I love y’all.  Richie, Brad and John.  I love you Auntie.  God is good and I’m done.”

Most of them find God before they die.  Grace is such a meal ticket, a life raft tossed overboard when you’re about to choke to death on saltwater.  It makes sense.  But I wonder if they mean it, if they really love God all the way down to their toes, the way a woman should love her man, and vice-versa.  If they don’t, God’ll be able to tell.  If he knows the number of hairs on your head, well, shit, he’s knows everything then.

I volunteer at our church twice a week when MOPs is going on--MOPs being Mothers of Preschoolers.  Moms set up tables and meet in the service area, mostly gossiping, but it’s a break away from their rug rats for a while, and they’re usually grateful for the respite.  The kids can get cranky, but I like being buried in the squalling noise and chaos.  I like how curious the kids are about everything and how respectful they sound when they look up call me Miss Tammy.  Sometimes I even take one as my own, in my imagination I do, and I picture myself making the little boy or girl waffles for breakfast, taking them shopping for clothes or roaming the food store aisle with them in my cart.

Our pastor’s a burly man with a handle bar moustache who reminds me of a redheaded Teddy Roosevelt.  In last week’s sermon he shared how his wife, LouAnne, came down with a deadly disease way back when they were missionaries overseas and LouAnne was pregnant.  A doctor said it was more than likely the unborn baby would suffer sever fetal damage and he recommended an abortion.  Pastor Reevus told us how he prayed as if he was in a fever himself, asking God over and over to tell him the correct course of action.  “And you know what happened?” Pastor Reevus asked the congregation.  We knew but didn’t say, and after a pause he slammed his palm on the pulpit.  “God answered clear as day.”  Then Pastor Reevus called his daughter up to the podium.  She was a skinny scarecrow of a girl, shy and nervous, which made her all the more endearing.  “This,” Pastor Reevus said with wet eyes as he put an arm around his daughter, “is our miracle.  This is why I believe.”

I believe too, but my faith is shaky and I know I’m not as strong as Pastor Reevus, not even as strong as most of the condemned inmates.

“There are no endings, only beginnings.  Love y’all.  See you soon.”

“I didn’t get my SphagettiOs.  I want the press to know that.”

“Let’s ride!”

On the drive Arlene calls and I put her on speaker.  She bubbling over excited.  Mason bought her twin lab pups.  It’s their anniversary, seven years.  I’ve forgotten, though I fake it, feeling plastic for lying to my sis who, as far as I know, has never been anything but truthful with me through these many years.

When she tells me, “I want to name one of the puppies after you,” I get flustered and emotional, tears splashing right away without warning like those menopause commercials they show on TV, but my way of responding to her sweet gesture is to say, “He bought you bitches?” 

I don’t know where it came from.  I guess I just like being the one to say bitch instead of Darold.  I guess, not so far deep down, I am jealous of Arlene after all.

“Female pups,” Arlene says, almost a question.

“And you want to name a dog after me?”

“Well, I thought it was a kind gesture.”

“Why not a gerbil or a piglet?  Why not something really filthy?”

“Hey now.”

“Hey now yourself,” I say, clicking off, feeling a tangle of rage and guilt, knowing Arlene meant well, knowing too that she always does everything the right way while I hardly ever do.

 

At the prison everything is as quiet as a library, a cemetery, a moment at the front door of a trailer when a husband comes home from a bar smelling like the sharp tang of vagina.

I go through screening and down the hall looking straight ahead, the way they tell you to do if you’re up high somewhere when you’re afraid of heights.

A couple of times somebody says, “Hey, Tammy,” and I try to nod but my neck has become a tree stump, as if severed from my head, and I’m unable to do anything other than stride ahead.

The halls are narrow, and seem more tapered every time I walk them.  I know I’m getting bigger, fatter than I’ve ever been, but it’s a claustrophobic feeling, like the time Arlene and I snuck through Old Man Miller’s drainage pipe and I got stuck after she’d made it to the other side.  I was there for hours, until she summoned Dad and then later I was given the belt on my backside--thirteen lashes, one for every year I was old at the time.

The interesting thing, the thing nobody mentions, is that most people Texas executes are Hispanics.  Look it up, you’ll see.  I’ve only known Mexicans to be friendly, family-first type of folk.  I can’t even imagine one getting stirred up enough to kill somebody, not to mention his wife and daughter as Enrique Vasquez is reported to have done.

For some reason, I always expect the inmates to be thin rails, but they never are.  These are men getting ready to die and that’s why they show up with bodies like Rocky Balboa’s.

Same with Enrique Vasquez.  Even with his prison uni on it’s easy to see he’s got a body builder’s physique.  Ordinarily condemned men enter this room looking resigned or sheepish, like a dog that’s been beat for peeing on the rug, but not Enrique.  His big brown eyes are bumblebees trapped in a jar, bumping up against glass time and time again, hitting one side of the jar then the other, then the lid, trying to pop it open.

He has two visible tattoos.  On his right forearm it says Maria with the last “a” trailing off into a stem that then forms a rose.  On his other forearms it says Choco, with a wispy loop off the “o” turned into a stem that forms an identical rose matching Maria’s.  Choco was his daughter, a nickname he gave her because she so loved chocolate.

Before I even do preliminaries Enrique jumps in.  “I didn’t do what they say.  I told the lawyer, the judge, the jury, I told everyone, but they wouldn’t believe.”

His eyes have turned black now, not menacing, but rather charcoal smudges, like the kind Darold would have on his hands after working at the shop back when he still had a job.

Usually inmates look around the room, at the guards, but Enrique has only looked at me and he won’t stop staring.

“I did not do it.  I don’t care about dying but I don’t want to be known for killing my wife and daughter.  I would never harm them.  They were everything to me.”

His hands and ankles are cuffed, but he kneels down in front of me and just as he does one of the guards grabs the back of his uni and the fabric rips, so the guard then yanks Enrique by his hair and heaves him back into the chair.

Enrique doesn’t seem to be bothered by this in the slightest.  His eyes have never left mine, and while it’s a cheater’s way out, I wish I was blind right now.  The strained agony in Enrique’s face is a portrait of death itself.

“I didn’t do it,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper now.  “I didn’t.”

“Please, sir,” I say, my drawl thicker than ever, as it always is when I’m nervous.  “I just need your last words.”

“I said I didn’t do it.  I would never, ever hurt them.”

“Anything else?”

“You have to believe me.  You have to help.”

Help has got to be the biggest word in the English language, even if it’s just four simple letters.  I never liked that Beatles song, but I never change the station when it comes on.  Help.  I need somebody.  Yeah, we all do.  I do.  Enrique does right now.  But it’s too late.  Too late for him and me and every other sonofabitch that’s been screwed over.

“Sir,” I say, “do you want those to be your last words?”

“What?”

I look down at my notepad which is bouncing between my quivering thighs.  “Your last words: are they You have to help?”

“Yes!  Please.  I loved my wife and child.  What man does not?”

“Sir, one last time.  What will you say as your last words?”

Enrique, for the first time, looks away from me, his head flapping backward, eyes raised upward at the bald white ceiling, his neck craned so far back that it seems his head might snap off.

“Sir,” I say, a trickle of piss escaping, wetting my groin area.

Enrique’s head comes swinging down.  He leans forward, too close, and so, Buck, the largest of the guards, hits Enrique on the knee with his club and Enrique’s leg responds reflexively, leaping out and kicking my ankle.

“Hey, asshole, knock that shit off,” Buck says, bringing his stubby club across Enrique’s throat and squeezing while Enrique flails.

“Buck.  Buck!” I say.  “It’s okay.  Let him be.”

Buck keeps his choke hold a beat longer, but finally eases up, removing his club.

“It’s all right,” I say to Enrique, though it’s not, though nothing is.  “I just need your last words.”

And then we’re done.  You’re done.  It’s finished.

Enrique looks at me square in the eye, jaw flexed, lips thin and pursed and I feel guilty for some reason, as if I convicted him myself.

I look down at the floor where there’s a red smear in the shape of an oversized comma.  “Sir, I’ll only ask this one last time.  What are your last words?”

He takes a sharp breath through his nose, nostrils flaring like a stallion, stands and nods to the guards.  When Buck takes his elbow and leads Enrique away, I write in my notepad: Last Statement:  I didn’t do it.

On the drive home I think about death, about murder and what kind of person would be capable of killing a woman and child.  A jury convicted Enrique, but DNA evidence has been known to clear lots of criminals after they’ve been convicted.  Only God and Enrique know the honest truth about his case. 

It’s hard not to feel hypocritical, as I often do, remembering the three abortions I’ve had since being married to Darold, all without him knowing.  Abortion is a woman’s choice and not murder, I know that, but still it’s a weight I carry around like all these extra pounds I’ve put on.

At home I take a bubble bath for the first time in years.  I light candles that I’ve placed around the tub, get in and read Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel,” not understanding much of the poems, but liking the music in her words.  She was thirty years old, same as I am now, when she stuck her head in an oven while her kids were in the next room.  She stuffed rags in the bottom seams of the doors so that none of the poisonous fumes would get out.  That woman must have really been suffering.

If Darold follows through with his charade of pretending to still be employed he’ll be home in an hour, so I get out, dry myself, dress, and fill two suitcases full of clothes and shoes.  I want to tell him face to face that I’m leaving, that I’m finally strong enough to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.

When Darold’s not home by eight o’clock, I rip a page from my notebook meaning to write him a note, but nothing comes to mind and so I leave the blank paper on the kitchen table, grab my bags and walk out without looking back, without a solitary regret.

In the car, I drive in silence, hearing myself breathing.  It reminds me of the last breath I saw Enrique take. 

He said he didn’t kill his wife and child, and jury or not, I decide I’m going to take his word for it that he’s innocent.  He’s dead now, so it might not matter to anyone else, but it does to me. 

Outside the night is as black as it’s ever been, and just as soothing.  As I scan for the moon, one Last Statement comes to mind: Let’s ride!