go on

There is fury painted on her hand like a Henna tattoo. He is gone. He is gone and there is not a way for him to come back. Her fingernails relieve the paint that isn't really there. Her skin breaks. The purpose of this exercise is to remind the body that it must go on without the heart. It must breathe without its lungs. Go on and breathe and walk and live without life.


She will miss him. His gloves and his hair. His shoulders so broad. She will wake some nights and stare at the wall, headlights passing outside of other people going on and she will not want to anymore. She will, but she will not want to. The fury in her hands will drip and melt to her knees and feet. She will pull her hair back and off her neck and tie it at the base of her skull and pretend she can feel his fingers there. But she cannot and she knows it.


Her life will clamber on. Her jacket and her eyes. Her shoulders unsure but steady. He will be gone. His shined shoes and unbuttoned sleep shirt. His heart erupted. His lungs incinerated. His body in a hole topped with a marble slab. The rest of the world will eat its candy, fight its wars, tell its jokes. And the punchline is her.


Her sad, aching being. For, she is not human. Without a heart, without lungs, she just survives rather than lives. She wants her own hole, her own marble slab to get hot to the touch in summer, crack and freeze in winter. She would like for him to come back and survive.


There is disgrace swollen in her joints. it sits there and causes her pain. She won't explain it to anybody. She believes it's all of the tears she won't cry anymore, gathered up under her skin, fermenting there, rotting her from the inside out. Slightly less than the walking dead. Now and then, she traces a circle on the bed and lays her hand on top of its invisibility and imagines he is there. But he never is. He always isn't.


People commit to other things. They have parties, and appointments, and plans to make. Other people find it necessary to dress with care most mornings, eat breakfast, so they will not starve, and encourage their friends to live a little bit. She does not understand these simple concepts anymore. They seem broken at her feet, and when she walks, all of it is too painful to go through with and walk on.


He is gone. His voice doesn't carry. His shaving cream doesn't sit foaming in the sink. The scent of his uniform no longer lives in the closet next to her uniform, because he no longer lives. Neither does she, but she survived. Surviving is a lot harder than dying.


He always told her to go on.