This is the Hardest Part

It is bitter at first. Then, the bitterness is replaced by a sudden rush of sweetness. Then there is nothing at all but saliva, and my tongue rolling over my teeth, left and right and then right and left and then…

You sit down on the other end of the couch. You aren't looking at me or at the television, which is not on, or at the dog, who is sleeping between us and the table. I can see the reflection in the television of you and the dog sitting next to me. You aren't looking anywhere that I can see. I can't open my mouth to say anything because it feels as though it is sewn up as if by magic as if by some incantated string that has weaved its way through the tender spots on my skin, the ability to speak your name forever closed.

And then you do look my way, all the while my hands lay on my stomach the way a dead person's hands lay on their cold, immovable torso. But instead of looking at my face, you look past me and through the window over my shoulder into the front yard where our old dog Hopey used to run. There is nothing in the yard now except some overgrown bushes, prickly and neglected, which is what we became after all the fighting and disagreements and you throwing things that were important to me, like the ceramic nameplate with both our names on it.

I want you to look at me, but you refuse. All it would take is one downward glance to catch my eye, but instead, you blink, and a tear forms in the corner of your eye. The tear appears but does not fall. It hovers and holds and hovers some more as though gravity has no effect on it. I watch the stubborn tear as though it is the only thing in the world worth watching. The tear is busy making a decision. It decides to recede back inside the protective cover of your lid, refusing to fall.

You put your head in your hand. I want to reach out and touch you, but this too seems monumental, an effort overwhelming, as the effects of the pill take hold of me. I look at my cement hands, not moving toward your creamy dark skin.

The ring on your finger is loose and tucked up against the knuckle, little nobs of polished silver rounded off. I loved the way that ring felt when you caressed me. You heave a sigh, a long, blown-out thing that should signify something important. But instead, your exhale portends to something bigger than that which is there before us, which is nothing. It's been only one moment since these thoughts began to run through my head. How many moments are in a second? How many seconds were we together before now? I cannot tell how many.

Finally, your eyes fall down to mine. You are saying something, but I am lost in trying to translate it, as though you are in one of the Godzilla movies we watched as children where the words do not match the movement of their lips. Your eyes do the work of your mouth. I am sure I hear you say, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have died that way."

A trace of a smile begins to form on your face. And then here's the tear again, only this time, it cannot hold itself back. It falls down your cheek in slow motion as though it is making a statement on the way down. It covers the space on your cheek and then rests for a moment on your chin, and then it dribbles to your jeans and becomes a dark blue spot. This all happens in the second moment.

I swear I can see my own reflection in the leaving of the drop, can taste the salt of it on my tongue, your salt, your taste. I close my eyes in order to hold onto it.

You sniff. My eyes open.

I force myself to utter the one word I have wanted the answer to for so long. Why? The word floats out of my mouth, across the couch, and falls to your ear, which is deaf to the wave that hits it.

You run your fingers, the one where the ring is, through your hair, that dark brown, curly, to your shoulders hair, and I think you are going to tell me why, but you don't. You close your eyes.

My nickname for you is Cady, which I made up as a short form for Catherine. But I can't seem to say that name out loud now. The pill I have taken washes through me like a gentle sea wave and temporarily shuts down the part of the brain that can formulate names. I cannot tell how long I have been on this couch or how long you have been sitting before me. It could be two seconds or two years. I have no way of knowing.

A tender haze fills my brain as though a million little fingers are inching their way across my scalp. My eyelids are drapes that are being pulled closed by a stage manager who does not know the play is still running. I try to open them. They fall back shut. This is when I feel you move. Instead of getting up and leaving the room, you lie down next to me. Your familiar body contours to mine, and your right arm falls over my waist. Your index finger finds the edge of my jeans and folds inside it like it used to do when we were together.

The up-and-down going of my breathing meets yours, and our inhales and exhales fall in line. Being with you was never easy, never as smooth and as even as a breath entering the body, never like platelets coursing through a vein. It was always an earthquake about to happen. Your body and my body were tectonic plates, my plate subducting under yours until I disappeared.

Do you remember running away? I ask you. You sink your face deeper into my shoulder as an answer. Do you remember moving out of our apartment when I was gone, and you had your hockey buddies pack your things into your truck, going up and down two flights of stairs countless times, telling each other what a bitch I was? That's how I imagine it was when you left, when I came home to an empty apartment, all of your stuff seemingly invisible. That night, when I went to brush my teeth, I actually threw my toothbrush out in case you or your friends stuck it in the toilet and then put it back in the cup on the sink like I wouldn't know what you had done.

I feel my right hand lift off of the couch. It is moving toward your face, your neck, your hair. When it gets there I think I will feel the silky slick feeling of your skin, but I don't. There is another sensation there. I force my eyelids up and pull my hand toward my face. On my palm is grey ash, flaking off onto my torso. I turn my head toward you, and your head dissolves onto the pillow the way the people's faces did in that movie they showed us in grade school about the attacks on Hiroshima.

I sit up.

I rub my hands together, but there is no ash there. There is just my skin, absent of your skin. There is no you there anymore. There is just me lying on the couch, the bitter taste of an old pill at the back of my throat. A tear forms in the corner of my eye, and when it falls, I catch it in my palm. I put my palm up to my eye and try to put the tear back inside, but instead, it disperses and absorbs into my skin, which I realize is what you did when you died and I tried to put you back.