Out of Orbit

“Traditions are important. We’ll need them for our kids someday.”

You said as we sat on the edge of the lake, water bubbling over my naked toes, sun peaking over the edge of the mountains.

I laughed, trying to hide my elation and hear it for the joke it was.

“Isn’t it a little early to be thinking about kids?”

“Life’s short, why wait?” you said, as nonchalant as if you were asking me to give you a sip of my water, instead of the thing I'd always simultaneously ached for and feared. You had a habit of that—knowing my deepest heart and making my every dream and wish so normal, so real.

“We have plenty of time, we just got married.” I said, shyly. You didn't push it, instead you just smiling knowingly. You knew me far too well. You knew I wanted this, even if I was always too embarrassed to admit it. I was never the one to take leaps of faith—I’ve always been calculated, practical—but since I met you I found that when your hand is in mine, I’d jump off a building.

You turned your eyes back to the early morning light on the water while my eyes turned into streams of joy, and I couldn’t take them off you. I watched you for a long time, even as you squinted against the coming morning.

“Stop staring at the sun, you’ll go blind!” I had to remind you, like I always did.

“It’s worth it, it’s just so beautiful.” you murmured with a smile.

I was only slightly surprised that we ended up at a lake, rising before the sun even though it was our honeymoon and normal couples would stay in bed all day. You were just like that, you always had been: dragging me from my sleep on more than one occasion, pulling me to trails I never would have travelled, finding the best spots to watch the start of a new day. I remember watching the sun rise from behind one of the arches in Moab, when it felt like we had landed on mars. Or when we hiked that fourteener in Colorado, and I thought I was going to die—until we reached the summit, and found heaven on earth.

Every moment of my life with you was cosmic.

“Why do you love the sunrise so much?” I asked. You tore your eyes from the green of the ridges and faced me. 

“There’s just something about beginnings,” you said with a shrug. “A fresh start, new hope. Don’t you feel it?”

I just shrugged back. I wouldn’t have cared much about mornings, but I did care about you. When I met you, I started to see why you had an obsession with the sun—your golden hair shining, your smile the only thing with enough gravitational pull to tilt my world off its axis. I’m just one of the many planets that got sucked into your orbit; without you, I’d be just a lifeless rock floating through space.

“I’m going to buy you this lakehouse someday, then we can come back every year.” you said. 

Your fingers entangled in mine. I laid my head on your chest, not bothering to watch the sun when all the light I’ll ever need is here: pounding in the heartbeat beneath my ears.

I believed you, after all: you’d always been a force of nature.

Even after you got sick.

Even when it was hospital gowns and daily check ups and sterile white walls. 

Even when your once muscled body grew slimmer, and the mere sight of your favorite food sent you hurling. 

You still lit the room with your sunbeam smile, even if it was slightly cloudy. You still promised me the lake house and more mountain memories. You still made me believe you’d be around forever.

We missed that first anniversary.

You couldn’t stand, and you would rather die than to have me carry all our bags by myself. 

“I’m going to be better for next year, don’t worry.” you said, smiling and grimacing at the same time.

I just smiled back, holding your hand as I remembered the first trip you ever took me on: rushing me out the door, your bags on your shoulders and mine around your wrists. You’d never let me carry anything, it wasn’t the "gentlemanly thing to do.” 

But when I complained, you pinned me with a stare that made me go weak at the knees, and simply said,

“Come on, we’re going to miss the sunrise.”

You never let me carry anything heavy.

You still made the best of it, though we couldn’t make it to the lake house. We opened the blinds of the hospital room, and watched the sun peak through mountains made of cinder block, pigeons cooing on your windowsill; the only thing missing was the water, unless you count the ocean I cried that week.

Shortly after, I forgot all about the lake house. For the rest of that year we settled instead for light filtered through flourescent bulbs, sacrificing the smell of your travel french press for stale coffee in styrofoam cups. I slept in your sleeping bag on a lumpy couch, and it was reminded me of sleeping on top of roots on that trail we hiked in California.

I started waking up with aches in places deeper than my muscles, seeing that your light was fading, though we both pretended it wasn’t. We clung to dreams of taking our kids to the lake house to watch the sun rise over the mountains.

“It isn’t fair.” I’d cried, once.

“Shh, baby girl.” you whispered into my hair, soothing me when you were the one in true pain. “Life’s too short, don’t waste it on tears.”

Instead of letting you feel any more of my pain, I started holding back my tears until I was in the shower, my sobs washing down the drain with the grime of the hospital. I couldn't bare to have you comfort me, to make me better, when I wasn't able to do anything for you. So I held it in, and held your hand.

Despite my inability, you were still there: numbers and vitals on the screens around us, heart beat beeping on the prompter. You were alive and you were there. I didn’t need the forest, I didn’t need a house. That’s what I kept telling myself, anyway. You were my home, and that was enough.

Until you weren’t.

Until the little lights stopped blinking, and they packed your body up and most of my soul with it. 

Until everything I had got buried in the same earth that I thought revolved around you. Somehow, when you died it still kept turning, and I didn’t know how to.

I wonder what you’d say, now, knowing I carry baggage that no one can lift off of me.

Promise me, you’ll go back to the lake house.

I didn’t want to, but who is a mere planet to question to the sun? 

It took me years to honor that promise. 

Instead, I buried my head in the sand. Dove into my career, had “the best year ever,” or so my boss said. I wandered the trails of concrete and hid from the early morning sun. I could only run when the memories chased me like demons, and then I’d drown myself in a lake of booze.

Finally, last year, something seemed to shift. I felt that I could finally think about you without it ripping my heart out. I could look at old pictures and feel something other than grief. I gave up working that year. I’d worked so much that I had a lot of savings. Instead I spent the entire summer wandering trails we used to take together.

Those trails led me back here: back to the lakehouse. Back to a future that was no longer a possibility. It’s not the same—nothing ever is. Now, a hollowness has settled over the water. One I have felt every waking moment since you left me.

I made sure to get here early, like you always told me to, finding our spot under that giant oak tree. It’s still dark, and I can hear the soft cooings of birds and other small animals along the bank. I take off my shoes and let my toes dip into the cool water.

It’s foggier than I remember, too foggy for this early in the season. The birds don’t sound happy, this time, more melancholic and filled with grief. Or is that me? When you were here, I was alive with overflowing with purpose. Now, everything in me is covered in shadow, and all of nature seems to respond.

I’d always thought that I orbited you, certainly a lesser one of the cosmic bodies, but still one that produced life whenever you shone on me. Now, I think that maybe I wasn’t a planet at all. Maybe I was nothing more than a satellite, a temporary moon, meant to be flung off into the outer darkness before you sucked me in. Instead, the source of my orbit was ripped from heaven, and I came hurtling back to earth with a vengeance. I became like that mysterious comet that crash landed and made the dinosaurs go extinct.

Smell that? The air is so clean here, not like the city. 

Yet, I find I can barely breathe here. Every intake brings more memory that I don’t have the room for: the bags your absence left on my shoulders have already split at the seams.

I stand to leave, I shouldn’t be here, tainting your favorite place with my sorrow, but I find that I can’t move. The sun has started to rise, the brilliant gold reflecting off the water just like the gold of your hair, and suddenly it’s pushing back all my shadows.

I remember you, in all your glory, smiling brighter than the noon day; your eyes more vibrant blue than the water of the lake. I remember falling asleep on you in the tall grass and waking to find you staring at me, as if I was the thing worth going blind for. I remember the way your smile brightened the middle of the night, and how your arms pulled me to your body until I melted.

I sit long past the sunrise and into the noon day, watching the world around me coming to life like I’m not even here. The world continues on, the earth still on its axis. I simply sit and remember what it felt like to be here with you.

It’s almost evening when I remember why I came, and dig the tear stained letter from my bag. You’re handwriting in shaky slants across the torn paper, my tears marring the edges so much that some words are impossible to read anymore. It’s the last thing I have that makes me feel like this was all a dream. 

I close my eyes and imagine it: you’re away on a solo trip, somewhere where there isn’t any reception. No people, no technology, just you and the mountains and the rising sun. You’ll be coming back to me any minute, waking me from this nightmare.

Then I open my eyes. I remember the wrinkled paper in my hands. Reality is cruel, but I can’t keep running from it. Though I would, I can’t wait for you forever. You told me not to, in those words that were destroyed by many sobs. Though I can’t read them anymore, I know exactly what you wrote. I’ve stared at them so many times that they are burned into my memory forever, just like the sun spots I tried to keep you from getting.

I dig a little hole with my hands, folding the paper and pressing it to the earth beneath where you used to sit. I cover it with dirt, just like I did to your coffin. This small act somehow seems more final, the last bit of you returning to the earth you loved so much. 

I don’t know anything about ghosts, but if spirits stay on earth I pray you’re sitting right there on the bank, on your eternal solo trip. I hope you’re watching as the sun peeks over the mountains. I hope, if you can’t stay here, that you’re coming back every year.

I finish burying your letter, taking extra care to press the earth down on top, just like it was before.

Don’t leave any sign that we were here.

Don't worry, there won't be.

I sold the condo we owned and all the stuff we had in it. I’m moving from the city, out to a town I’ve never been too, where there aren’t memories that strangle me at every turn, and where my baggage won’t feel so heavy. I don't know much about where I'm going; you'd be proud of me, I'm taking such a leap. All I know is that there’s an old house there that sits at the base of the mountain. It has a large porch, overlooking a river. There’s even a deck, on the other side, that faces to the east and to the rolling green ridges.

It’s the perfect place to watch the sun come up every morning.

I think about my future, about how I’m cleaning up our rubbish and taking it with me, leaving no trace that you were ever here at all. I can't leave you scattered all over the place. On some level, it breaks my heart that the rest of the world won't be graced by memories of the sun. On another, it’s the only thing that will keep my heart beating. I have to steal whatever warmth is left for myself, or else I know I'll never make it.

My thoughts drag on, the birds shifting to their evening songs and the cool breeze getting even colder. I sit on the bank, my toes in the water until they turn as wrinkled as my heart, and I watch as the sun begins to set.