Sometimes I ask myself if it meant anything at all—me, you, the roast chicken, those two years together that now feel murky and placed under thick fog. You driving to work after one hour of sleep, week after week after week. You going crazy from no sleep, from too much me, from us taking each other’s brain hostage. You and me staying up drinking scotch, playing chess, smoking pack after pack, listening to Kid A, taking baths on E. Me taking up the whole bed every night, me waking up laughing, me screaming in my sleep. Us sleeping through every Saturday. Your love for dates and numbers.
Your notes, left behind in the morning signed Tiny, I love you. The wine gums, only the black and red ones, cause that’s the ones you like. Me leaving a trail of bobby pins around your house so you could find them later, I bet you still find one once in a while, yeah you probably still find one gathering dust somewhere behind the couch.
The Lions Gate bridge, your post card that said “This is where you tell her, this is where you tell her, this is where you tell her that she is never to be forgotten”. Your eyes in the morning, between the sheets. Your sounds of breakfast making, of reading a book in another room. The sound of sprinklers—who knew that sounds could hurt?
Me crying on the phone, me suffocating under your presence, me punching a hole in my wall, me jumping out of the car. Reading aloud from Wide Sargasso Sea: “Say die and I will die. I watched her die many times”.
Your hands crawling up my legs, that night you said that you can hold me like a six pack. Your whiskey breath, your ring, your eyes always looking back, always careful, always thinking: what if she does, what if she doesn’t.
Our nights in the cabin on the island and my Elegie in E minor. With the lights off and the windows boarded up: city dwellers obsessed by the discovery of darkness. Elegie: a mournful, melancholic or plaintive funeral song or a lament for the dead.You know, that was the summer we still had a year ahead of us.
Our naps in the winter time with the rain falling outside. The rain falling outside while we were on a bus in Florence had a different quality. The belts tied to the bed, the ghost in the elevator.
Our time that we wasted, our endless numbered days. Our time when I played the Elegie for you on the piano, this time at my mother’s house. I played it over and over, I didn’t want to play anything else because nothing else fit and nothing felt right at all. That same evening when we baked cherry pie. Was it all broken already then? Maybe the pie was blueberry, maybe I wasn’t lucky, maybe I was lonely, maybe we were both lonely, who can remember now.
But night after night I take myself back to us watching Blade Runner. The world was large but we were larger, do you remember? Us dancing to La Javanaise, Serge Gainsbourg in your living room, lasagna that took five hours to make burning to coals in the oven. You running to the gas station at 4:30 am on a Tuesday night to get us two Rolo ice cream cones and a pack of Dunhills Special Reserve. The breeze on my sweaty back, an arm dangling out the window. Do you remember?
Your love of the smell of rosemary. Your wooden table where I scratched the letters “TINY LOVE” and you added “S SOMEONE ELSE”.
You’re tired of saying sorry but I was touching those carved letters when I read your letters to her.
————
Anna Zoria is a student living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She grew up in Eastern Siberia, where it was too cold to do anything but read. She currently studies literature and painting in hopes of one day fulfilling her lifelong goal of becoming a barista. In her free time Anna likes to post pictures of cats on Tumblr and contribute to her student newspaper, the Ubyssey.