‘Till the next Spring’s Green

 [Trigger warning: mentions of suicidal ideation]

‘I’ve got you’, You say staring back at me with golden brown eyes. We’re laying down on fresh green grass with the sunset glow bouncing off our faces. ‘I know’, I reply with a toothy smile almost blinding him with my joy. With your large hand holding mine I trusted your word. So imagine my surprise when I came home, six months pregnant from work, to find everything you owned gone from our shared living space. Divorce papers in sand paper envelope laid heavy on my dark brown wooden dining table. ‘I’ve got you’ you said! Now there I was knees apart screaming in a crumbling public hospital with impatient nurses on either side telling to push. ‘My baby’s cries melted all that anger away’ is what I should’ve thought when I saw the magnificent creature we created together but I was terrified. It was humiliating having to move back into my parents’ home because I could not afford all the bills you left behind. It was draining having to give my all to work and the child because I had nobody to carry all my burdens with me.

I should’ve killed you when I had the chance. It was in the next Spring with rain pouring down in the inner city when I saw you jaywalking through the street. I should’ve have pressed down on the wheel and ended your useless miserable pathetic excuse of a life right there and there. If only you knew of the pain you bestowed upon me when you broke your promise. You let me fall with nothing to cushion my land. I look at the bundle of joy you left me with and I get livid. Livid because of my stupidity to have even trusted you.

 I should’ve known you were a coward when I had to approach you first. Do you remember? That fateful noon when our mutual friends were having a get together. I had taken a walk towards the beach and I saw you staring at the ocean. Cuss, I was an idiot and quickly smitten by a cussing handsome face. I came to a stop six feet next to you and your turned to look. You should have saved me from yourself. Why give me a magnetic crooked smile if you knew you were capable of breaking me? So I glided towards you and asked if you’d like to accompany back to the party. I was a cussing fool.

And now you have the nerve to send me a handwritten letter all these years later. You write about your trips to Kenya and Japan, saying you’ve found your inner calling to be a Life-coach. How the inner peace you found in green mountains made you a better man. Now I’m angry all over again! After moving on with a better home and pay. Having found a new love that gave me a soft foam landing when you left me to fall. I had finally found my own cussing inner peace without your short comings weighing me down. A better cussing man? Don’t make foolish conclusions! You should’ve been a better man the day I pushed out your child’s big head and brought them into this world alone. The shame I had heavy on my shoulders when I had to tell curious gossips that I had no idea where you were. Kenya and Japan?! Foreign lands were your wake up call to find a suitable career path after the never ending dreams you put me through! ‘Hey hun! I just applied for acting classes so I can win an Oscar’ ‘Hey hun! I got a job in a real estate agency so I’ll become filthy rich’ ‘Hey hun! I quit my job to pursue a culinary arts degree so I can be the best private chef.’ Give me a break! A Life-coach? Do you have any idea what that even is? What are you going to tell your clients? ‘Hey there! I’m a happily divorced man who abandoned his family to find inner peace in Nairobi and Tokyo.’

I hate you. I think my rage almost killed me. You almost killed me when I laid on the hospital bed on the day of our son’s first birthday. Burnt out while running on one meal a day because I took a second job. You almost killed me when I contemplated jumping off a building after tutoring a child on the sixth floor of my old apartment. Cuss you! Who do you think you are telling me you are sorry and I should let you see my son? You have clearly lost your mind. I almost lost my own so I can see the signs. You are not sorry, you are lonely. You’re forty years old now and regretting your young age’s loss. You want the comfort of my warmth because your bed’s cold. You want someone to to look up to you so you plead for my son. You have no right.

‘Till the next Spring’s green I will loathe you. I have burned down everything that reminded me of you. I have spilled tears that came from your memory and drained my love for you. Do you still think of me as the idiot who approached a cuss up? Now that you have a bright aura and sun shines from you buttocks must I come come down the yellow brick road to your embrace? I can’t believe I let you get to me again after all these years. I thought my love for my family was greater than my hatred for you. That perhaps my new found happiness had buried my hatred for you. ‘I’ve got you’ still haunts me in my sleep, mocking me for even trying to forget you. He has your eyes. They hold all the love you never had for me. In a twisted way maybe you did ‘get me’ with the ever present smile from my son. I can’t let you in to my world. I don’t trust that you will not destroy everything you touch when you enter it again.

Please don’t call again.