An is to a was I once toyed with the thought of no longer being in love with you. That was while you were still an is, not yet a was. After you'd gone my phone never rang, but for the longest time it still wasn't real. I'd wonder why you hadn't called and tell myself you probably got held up in class, or stopped by the library to do some homework, or went to the gym. You often did. Until one day I called you. I called you and actually expected your voice to answer, "Hey Beans." What a romantic way to address me, "Beans". You know how it went. Your phone kept ringing and I thought how you were busy somewhere and that you'd call me back, until I heard your voice. It was your voicemail voice and I realized I'd never hear your regular voice again, and that eventually they'd disconnect your phone and even your voicemail voice would disappear. I saved that voice to my computer, sweet like honeydew and I savored every syllable knowing that they had once rolled off your tongue. How I began to envy them. I uploaded it to my ipod and played it on repeat, even in the car and you said, "Hi. This is Peter's phone. I'm obviously not here right now but if you've got something to tell me leave a message and I'll get back to you." 1
I stood in the shower the other day and felt your arms around me. Not like, I could almost feel your arms around me, no. I actually felt them, and I leaned into it letting all the air leave my lungs, but you vanished. I must have moved too suddenly, scared you away. Next time I'll take care not to move, not an inch. But next time you'll stay longer. You'll do all the things you used to do and I'll tell you how much I love the hair, how it forms in its sparse pattern on your chest. And you'll smile and ask me when I'm going to buy more soap. "You enjoy coming dangerously close to running out of things" you used to say and I'd laugh. I imagine a day when I can no longer close my eyes and picture your face so clearly, every inch of your body. When I can no longer remember how your skinny lips tasted. Remember I told you at rust I couldn't with full lips and thin lips just wouldn't date you 'cause your lips were too skinny? I liked a guy do. You were sad after that and I felt bad. Just like the time I told you I hated that coat with the fur around the collar and that it was feminine. "Tell me what kinda guy wears a coat with fur on it?" You hid it in the closet for months. But I love your skinny lips and that furry coat. I would have married you too. To think, the thought of being with one man for the rest of my life had once worried me. I found the rust moved item a few days ago, crumpled up in a sad ball round like a sleeping dog had curled up in the comer. At first I thought it was some live or recently dead creature somehow broke into my apartment. I poked it with my big toe. The lump gave in completely and that's how I realized it was fabric. I picked it up with my thumb and index finger still half expecting something living to escape. And I recognized the dark blue cotton t-shirt. I 2
un-crumpled it, with both hands now and saw COLLEGE written across the chest in nondescript white font. You'd gotten it for free a few years back from those people who come around the dorms giving out free t-shirts to any student who would fill out a quick survey. The surveys were never quick but you'd do anything for a free t-shirt. It's gotten here now. I sat on the couch holding the shirt inches from my face and breathed it in like an elixir. It had been so long since I'd smelled your smell but I wanted to rip the thing to shreds. 'Cause you'd left me with a shirt that smelled of you, and that's it. I cut the insulting piece of clothing into shreds, unidentifiable at best, and wondered if each piece still carried your scent. Maybe the shirt only smelled of you as a whole. I was wrong. The smell grew stronger even and filled the house with anger palpable, rude. I zip locked the shreds and threw them in the freezer, unable to waste any object that remembered you as well as I did. My mother came today -- offered me things to eat, which I put in the fridge so she wouldn't remind me how much weight I'd lost. To which I'd say, "I was here the last time I had the weight, so I'm sure I'll fmd it around the house somewhere." She'd use her angry eyes which hadn't worked on me since the third grade when I was pudgy and worried about what everyone thought, and I'd curl up on the couch in a blanket until the silence escorted her to the door. She did, however, find the shards in the freezer, but didn't ask me what they were. Maybe she knew. Then she force fed me chicken noodles, reminding me how much I'd loved it when I was a kid. "You do know it's been five weeks," she said. Had it? I'd lost count after three days. 3
I wish you'd stop moving things. I looked this morning for your voicemail voice on my ipod. For long unbearable moments I thought it had gotten deleted and in a cold sweat, ran through every track in my library. Finally I found it in one of Jewel's albums, "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland" and let out a breath of air I didn't know I'd been holding. The shirts, letters, and old gifts strewn about the house are one thing, but thinking I'd lost your voice had threatened to stop my heart. The past few nights I was wrenched from vicious dreams by your smell, overwhelming the apartment and slapping my face firm with the back of its heavy hand. I devoured it, then stumbled to the bathroom and threw it back up until the only thing I could smell was my own bile. I spread water over my face, then lay in bed and saw faces of animals in the cottagecheese spackled ceiling. A cartoon version of your face winked at me through the pimply paint and I lay, unable to sleep or wake in a comic version of a coma that left me eyes-open. * Last Valentine's Day you bought me one yellow rose, a slice of agate that stood cleverly on a miniature easel, and an opal ring that I knew cost a couple hundred dollars. We'd only been dating for a few months. I didn't know whether to exclaim with kisses ofthanks or scold you for spending so much money. 4
This year I got the Valentine's gifts you had already purchased from your mother and her red-rimmed eyes. The smallest round wooden box with an agate embedded into its cover, a decorative onyx dish for small stones and treasures, and another ring we'd seen once in a jewelry store, pink sapphire center, surrounded by 48 diamonds, yellow gold. With it was the matching wedding band, diamond studded side to side. I hid it from myself and can't find it now. '" '" '" At the supermarket today, all the vegetables stared while the fruits whispered and packaged meats grumbled about my unkempt hair. I left and bought nothing. '" '" '" According to my mother it's been seven weeks. She made an appointment for me to see the doctor for some reason I can't remember. I was beating myself in a permanent marker tictack-toe on the freshly painted bathroom wall while she tried to tell me. Tie-tae-toe, three in a row, Johnny got shot by a G-I-Joe. '" '" '" Everybody at the post office at 10:30 a.m. is old. They have no jobs, retired or something. One man in front of me wears too much tweed and speaks over my head at the man behind me, tells him his two dogs are named Toyvo and Fidel one from the Antarctic and one from the Caribbean. He had to be geographically fair. 5
All the old people are deeply unsatisfied, like they stuck their faces and hands in a hot bath for too long. Their hands are stamped with raisin spots. Their ears grow weeds. I can picture you eighty, no weeds in the ears, no raisins, no prunes. Mother called, took me to this doctor's visit. Doctor Fallopian, I swear it sounded like he said. You'd be proud I wasn't rude. You weren't there to sit in the waiting room reading women's magazines. When I'd come out, you'd put on display your newly acquired female knowledge. Getting a stubborn diaphragm in place, how many fluid ounces the average tampon held. I made Mom wait in the car. Doctor Fallopian was too young for his shiny cue ball head. The hair that skirted his ears made the top of his head shinier still. He was conservative with his eye contact. I told him about the objects in the house you'd been moving, how the radio had somehow turned to your favorite oldies station, your shoes had walked right out of the closet, and the remote always ended up on your side of the couch. He nodded his and wrote this down with an ink pen he kept clicking, asked me how long you'd been gone. I really didn't know. I noticed a calendar on the wall was set for Wednesday. Which Wednesday though? As I was leaving he turned, took the pen from his shirt pocket, click click. "You're about two months pregnant." 6
After a heavy moment, I shrugged my shoulders. Two months? A piece of hair escaped from behind my ear and blockaded one eye. Fallopian was clearly confused. His thick brows furrowed, forming one, and he tilted his head a bit to the side like some dogs do. He started speaking again, and clicking his pen I assume but I was already half-way out the building. In the waiting room one woman had a perfectly round orb for a stomach. None of them looked my way as Fallopian followed me as far as the door, wagging pamphlets. Mom was in the car where I'd left her, the engine still running. She took me to lunch and I had your favorite, pierogies, and a mountain dew. This morning, neglected in the bottom of the hamper, was a small black box wrapped in a used fabric softener sheet. Velvet to the touch, it was the kind you could drag your finger across and make marks. I didn't recall stowing it there, but knew what waited, so silent, inside. The two rings fit over my fmger like one, just as you had intended, like your hand in mine. In the mirror they looked perfectly at peace on my hand, and my stomach was still flat, but there were moments I know I felt movement. Curled up on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa, I brought my knees in toward my chest and fit your old sweat shirt up and over them. Our favorite episode of Seinfeld was on. George lied about being "the master of his own domain." I laughed out loud, and everything in the apartment stayed just where it was. 7