treatswords

“Let’s go to Maine.”

He said through a text from across the country.

We had broken up over a year ago, yet the text lingered in my mind. My thumb hesitated over my phones keyboard, holding onto a response.

I pictured the two of us in a creaking house on the coast of Maine. The salty air wearing away the gray wood. A house with a hump on its back, a slouching kitchen, the left side not level with the right.

“It’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the kitchen!” He would say. We would fill the small house with laughter. That was one thing we never lacked.

“I swear, I can be so mad at you and somehow you manage to crack a laugh from me.”

I used to tell him.

We would own a small boat, a red and brown one, tiny motor in back. We would carry with us a few bottles of beer and a rusty cage to trap lobster in. In my hand a small bait bag stuffed with salted Herring. We would toss the cage into the water, rope burning our hands, waiting for a red crustacean to crawl inside.

He would make me feel warm, make me believe I was comforted.

He didn’t for the years we were together before, but in Maine he would.

We would put hot water in a kettle on cold winter days. Letting the steam scream through the house. A floor board creaking in response to the high pitched squeal.

I would rush to it, slip it off the stove and pour us each a hot cup with a squeeze of lemon.

“Tea, hun?”

We didn’t drink tea, but in Maine we would.

We would wake up early to watch the sunrise on our porch that over looked the Atlantic. Boats drifting from the dock for a day cruise.

We would wander the streets of Maine. Fresh seafood in bushels being sold on street corners. Vendors hanging earrings on hooks.

“I’ve been making these for years, real platted gold.”

A woman would tell me.

We would sift through sandy beaches for hours, indolently looking for sea-glass. Fingering through cold pockets beneath rocks, flicking white crab carcasses with our finger tips.

We would return to our old, creaking house when the sun was setting. He would boil lobster and slap melting butter on porcelain for dipping.

He would remark on my beauty.

“That shirt really makes your eyes dazzle.”

He didn’t compliment me before, but in Maine he would.

We would be sober in that house. Long gone would be the sticky nights of spilled beer, burning whiskey shots, and stained toilet rims. Waking up with a layer of sweat trying to spill from the roots of my hair. A throbbing headache, shaky eyes.

“Oh, I can’t even stand up.”

The nights of finding him in a pile of empty bottles, alone, lips stained red.

“Did you really drink all my wine?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t even like wine.”

The years of alcohol clogging his mind. Trapping it, letting the pink flesh soak for too long.

He used to drink Hennessy, but in Maine he wouldn’t.

I had lived under a rock for years, but in Maine I would emerge. A shinning salamander, ready to dip my feet into grass. He had trapped me there, deciding I didn’t deserve to know what warmth felt like.

His cold shoulder, my head trying to nestle into the fur on his chest.

“Get off me.”

He would grumble. My hair slipping from his skin, back turning towards him.

Our house in Maine would be haunted. A creek here, the shutting of a door there. A woman in a veil sometimes gazing out the attic window.

“I’m scared.”

I would tell him.

“I’ve got you.”

He would become my home, my place to hide.

My protector.

“Just crawl under here.”

He would say, lifting the corner of the sheets up.

He never made room for me before, but in Maine he would.

“I love you.”

I would say.

“I love you too.”

In Maine, he would say it first.

In our small house, I would blossom. Finally bloom from a stale seed. There would be no walls to enclose me, no ceiling too high. My branches could continue stretching.

As I grew, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, red axe, clenched within his knuckles. But he wouldn’t chop me down, not in Maine he wouldn’t.

Our little house on the East Coast, filled with the couple we could never be.

I decide to leave the gray house there, frozen in time.

I’m convinced if I ever decide to visit, I would find the house collapsing into itself like a wet box.

I would peak in the window, curious.

“Who are we in Maine?”

The kettle of tea would be screaming, gray steam floating from its stout like exhaust. No one there to remove it from the stove.

The floor littered in empty bottles, brown and green glass sprinkled on the floor.

Stained lips, shaky eyes, a beard grown down to his feet.

A brown stump in the corner.

Bark peeling from its face.