Dinkaltranen

The phone rings while you stare at the reflection of the digital clock in the bottles of wine covering the table. 12:37 AM. It’s been 2 years, but nothing’s ever been the same. When she left she took everything with her. You know what love is now. It was all the little perfect moments, unscripted, scattered throughout every interaction. Floating down a river on a blow-up mattress, and throwing the bug spray back and forth to fend off hairy caterpillars like a pair of musketeers fencing against countless enemies with just one blade. Going shopping in the city dressed as clowns, with propeller hats, rainbow lollipops, and suspenders, acting completely normal otherwise. The second you got home you asked her in a haughty accented voice if she wanted a cup of tea and you both laughed yourselves to tears.

The way she calculated how much she had to wiggle her butt against you to make you hard, until you eventually flipped her over and gave her what she wanted. The way you’d kiss each other on the head if you passed the other sitting down. The sweat around her eyes as you locked fingers and she urged you to come inside her.

The vocal fry when her accent came out. The way she cried at every movie even when it wasn’t sad. Her exquisite vocal range, and the way she couldn’t resist singing along when you played the piano. Sometimes you even practised a duet just to lure her out when she was having a bad day, just to make her smile. You held her whenever she needed it, you even had a code word for it when it got too much in public: Hemmir. It didn’t mean anything, you both just thought it sounded right.

12:38 AM.

Finding her on the bathroom floor in a pool of her own blood. Grabbing the pair of tourniquets you had in your hiking kit, and trying to ignore her screams of pain as you put them on each arm, but if it hurts that means they’re on properly. Let me die, let me die, she wails. You just crouch there in the doorway after calling for an ambulance, staring, numb, the blood everywhere, flung on the walls from her flailing, she’s drenched with sticky coagulate like the pictures of animals in an oil spill as the blood congeals. When you finally get home you put on a home video of you both on holiday that you made together and that you hoped to show at your wedding while you scrub away at the bloody bootprints left by the EMTs. It looks like a crime scene. It is. It is a crime against reality.

She doesn’t talk when you visit her. Sometimes she cries, but she doesn’t respond to your words. When you finally take her home not even the piano can bring her out. You find the meals you make cold and untouched hours later outside the door to your bedroom she’s locked herself inside. You made sure there was nothing around after she came home, even the kitchen knives are in a locked box. When she finally comes out, the first words she tells you are that you don’t care about her, that even as you made the call to emergency services your voice didn’t so much as tremble. She wishes you hadn’t come home early. It wasn’t to punish you, it was to free you, because she felt like she was a burden.

You cry for the first time in front of her and she slaps you. The smoulder in your heart coughs then dies. She’s already packed her bags, and she leaves while you stand there. Don’t let her go. Don’t let her leave. Why did you do it? Tell me what I did wrong? Please just tell me. I will do anything to help. I will pay any price. I will make any change you ask of me.

She’s gone.

12:39 AM.

The piano sounds off key no matter how much you tune it. You meal prep a week’s worth of your favourite food. Even after you reheat it 3 times in the microwave it’s still somehow ice cold in the middle, and you eat it anyway. It tastes like the burnt scrapings at the bottom of a pan. Days disappearing into one another, indistinguishable. Forcing yourself to go out on a hike, and recognising all her favourite animals that she used to point out to you. Turning off a movie because an actress has the same accent as her, turning down a date with a coworker for the same reason. Having a fever and wondering if the creaking of the floorboards is her moving around to bring you a cool cloth and soup. Love has never felt so hateful. The sting of her palm against your face felt tender.

You forgot how easy it was for things to end, and how long it takes to rebuild. Breaking free of the amniotic sac for a second time into the bleak ugliness of the world. Her memory hangs on you like a shadow. Women can smell it on you. It was a sign that you could be in the deepest embrace with them and feel nothing. The most wonderful memories could be happening and still your eyes would be blind to them. Love was real, and you lost it, your capacity for it collapsed down into a singularity. Every day feels like it’s stretched out too far and too thin, agonisingly long but equally forgettable.

12:40 AM.

A voice. She’s alive. You drunkenly say hello, and she drunkenly says it back. She tells you she still loves you, and you say it back. The black hole of your heart explodes in rebirth, blasting a universe’s worth of matter that will become stars and galaxies and everything that ever has or will exist. Unlimited potential. She’s a city away but you’re already booking a car ride there.

04:09 AM.

Coffee in a pantry sized kitchen. She looks frail, but happy, and you sit together in silence for a long time after a simple greeting at the door. Eventually you are getting hungry, and the booze is wearing off. You start making breakfast. It doesn’t feel like bad silence. As you’re rummaging through the fridge for eggs, she finally speaks.

Just a word. A single word.