treatswords

I tilted the glass bottle from side to side. The salmon colored liquid favoring corners.

I twisted off the cap and sprayed.

A mist of mandarin and Blackcurrant liqueur nestled into the gray interior.

He opened the passenger door and slid inside.

He tossed his small black suitcase behind us.

I was never good at goodbyes.

They always seemed to linger in my stomach. The thought of the unknown is what got to me. I always assumed the worst and this goodbye wasn’t any different.

We checked into our hotel. White sheets tucked neatly beneath a masrshmallow comforter.

He pulled out a small bottle of Hennesy he had tucked in his pocket. He sipped it slowly, admiring the expensive room we were able to afford due to our one night stay.

“The king suite for one night ma’am…let me check on that for you.”

“That will be $250.00 for the night.” She said.

“That’ll do,” I said plainly as I spit out a nail I had bitten too short.

“Great, can we keep a card on file?”

I dug around for my debit card, blood leaking from the corners of my terra-cotta nails.

The Last Night

We sat across from one another, drinking red wine over white rice and raw fish

I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted time to pause for me, maybe just once it would take a bargain.

The decision to leave had been from his side.

We had sat at our center island. His shaved head glistening in the badly lit kitchen.

“I can’t stay here, I am a city man and you know that. I couldn’t spend one more winter in this hell-hole.”

I looked outside. Snow was blowing in circles, tucking itself beneath the windowsill.

“I understand that, but I just can’t imagine leaving my family, my friends. My entire life is here!”

The conversation ended with the making of a decision.

He was leaving to the West Coast and that was that.

We curled up in the bed that was much too big for us.

The red wine rushed to my head, my emotions becoming exposed like cable wires.

He was never the type to hold me. Even after sex. Distance was his band-aid, the only way he felt protected.

I stared at the back of his head, praying that the sun would decide to stay hidden. Allowing the moon to own the sky.

He rolled over, his breath smelling of salmon and congnac.

He breathed in.

“What perfume are you wearing?”

“Oh, some old thing, I forget the name.”

“Hmm, I like it.”

And with that small statement, the perfume became the smell of this moment. It became the kissing, our bodies tangled. His beard hair like bristles against my chest. It became the red wine that had notes of tobacco, the plastic chopsticks my fingers refused to learn, the way his green eyes melted over candle light.

It became the drunken nights, beer bottles scattered over every surface, words not forming correctly from his mouth.

“You’re wasted!! I just don’t understand you, I can’t keep doing this!” Would come from my end.

His end was another swig, another beer, another drink. Masking the pain. Masking anything that was remotely him.

It became the smell of goodbye.

The gray airplane wings threading through the sky like a needle.

The loss of his wit, the loss of his gapped teeth, the loss of the woman sketched on his arm in black ink.

The loss of a love I hadn’t deserved.

One that was rare, one that I knew wouldn’t come back for me.

I would stay here, in a town I knew, surrounded by the people I knew. I would stay blanketed in my comfort zone, covered in inches of snow, hoping my heart would freeze so that I wouldn’t miss you.