VIEVE LEE

“I’m letting you go” the words came clearly, spiking her ears from small holes in the phone, while simultaneously tearing through her chest and into her belly. As if she had swallowed a large ball of steel wool tied to a weighted anchor. She sat at a small cafe table, littered with tawny scraps of croissant. Artifacts of another’s joyful morning. The sun was bright now. Light flecked off tiny iridescent fractions of pavement sand. A bus passed, it’s heavy mass resonating a low rumble. The cargo, as still as Margo.

“I’m letting you go.” The words made her feel frigid. Dangerous. As if her otherwise 98.7 degree, soft, fleshy self, was now a liquid so cold it would boil the skin to touch. A hazard to be released immediately. She hated those tongue like words masked in faux consideration. Like a warning, before the hands of life part. Releasing her deadly liquid self. Particles breaking, dematerializing on the descent to rock bottom.

"I’m letting you go….Margo, did you hear me?” The voice said, soft but acute. Margo held the phone close to her ear and nodded.

I’m - letting - you - go. She was no stranger to this variation of words. I’m letting go, I’m going, GO. “Go” she knew. The conjoined letters formed an abhorrent and hollow feeling inside her. The ‘G’ resembling a hefty meat hook, it’s half noose looped around her intestines, to be pulled fast and hard by the odious vacuum of the ‘O’. Leaving her vacant.

Her mind wandered to him. Stretching back to those first moments in the crowded bar. He was disheveled, she thought, rough around the edges. A fast talker. More interested in speaking "at” rather than “to” possibly void of content. But then he turned to her, out of the darkness and she could see, his face was soft and honest, with broad handsome eyes. When he spoke, the voice was deliberate, careful. She was nervous. Beads of sweat formed on her temples. He knows she told herself. Fear turns the skin translucent. The only visible remaining elements, purple lines running perpendicular. Like subway maps. She tried to smile, though couldn’t be sure her brain transmitted the information correctly to the corners of her mouth. His moon like eyes spotlighting her. As if she carried the tides. There was a dedication to each other, an understanding. This was the beginning of a deep love. One she remembered only the beginning and the ending of now.

GO. She understood those violent and hallow letters a cellular level. Stacking up against themselves, a catalogue of catastrophe. She had been the one to say it. 

Those letters had become their love. The warmth they stripped, replaced by an empty nausea. For in her wake and in her sleep there he was. A protest of love against love. She became the hours she sat through. Knowing what kept her awake could not be ended in dreams.

“Margo!” The voice rang louder now. Less considerate. “Do you understand what I’m telling you. I’m letting you go…”

Margo sat up. The sun reflecting in her river filled eyes.

We tried to move in the ways we had before she got sick. Mimicking our own voices, the movement of our limbs, how our feet met the ground. Were these my limbs? My voice? I couldn’t be sure- but I knew we needed orange juice.

I took her car. The familiar smell of leather and peppermint hung in the cold air as ornaments of softer times. I lit a cigarette. The sunroof, served as a clandestine aperture for the reckless. White smoke billowed up into the night sky, like tea kettle steam. "You're not so surreptitious, you know." Nagged the scolding voice inside my chest, "Just minor rebellion," I replied to myself….pathetically aware. I drew up the hood on my jacket. A shield unto myself.

The grocery store was small and familiar. I wandered, gathering items I’d neglected in the "sudden" rush to her side. Toothbrush, deodorant, a pack of gum…Trident Original. Her favorite. I wormed my way through the narrow isles, half aware of my surroundings, though sure the lights seemed brighter than I remember. The cashier, a girl I once knew in Junior High School. She wore the same eye liner-white with a bright indigo blue. My bare, tired eyes served as a camouflage. She seemed not to register my features as familiar. Or, perhaps, apathy was our camouflage?

On the drive home, I watched the country road roll out in my headlight beams. Like a ball of white thread, unraveling across a black carpet- the end, just out of reach. I forgot how tenebrous this road looked at night. There are no street lights in the country. The bright glow of Los Angeles, where I’d spent the past ten years, seemed to evaporate behind me. Like the sparkly beads of rain on the windshield. Gliding up past my eyes, real, whole, before disbanding back into the place they once came. I used to drive that road fast. Really fast. Test my fate. However, that night, I drove slowly. Studying the curves of the road as they revealed themselves in beams of light. Like magic marker on black paper.

My eyes fell to the ditch on the right side of the road. Wet blades of grass illuminated like daggers. I imagined slowly steering the car into this ditch. Not fast enough to cause significant damage. Just slow enough for an inconvenience. I imagined, my hand navigating the movement of the car-barely to the right-a nudge at gravity. The hood awkwardly pursuing the terrain, the sound and feel of wet gravel and grass. Eventually, finding it's resting place in the marshy pit. I thought of the tow trucker who would arrive. Fat and uncondemning. He would pull my mothers silver sedan out of the wet marsh with heavy utensils. There would be an awkward silence as I watch it’s rescue, like a soggy, drowning dog. The tow trucker would speak up.

So, what happened here, anyway?

I would stare at the car, like a confused infant discovering fingernails for the first time. In understanding a gesture of acknowledgment is socially expected, I would shrug my shoulders and offer him a look in the eyes. In addition, to make his trip worth while, I would provide him with the courtesy of voice. I would say, after long consideration:

I dunno...

Giant potholes in my parents driveway snap me back. It never did get paved. I always hit them too fast. Natures speed bumps. 

I park in my old spot. The cherry tree out front, furnished year round with white Christmas lights. The yellowy glow of the kitchen. The white lace curtains. Forever unchanged, though somehow, constantly evolving. I grab my belongings and begin the long - though technically short - decent inside. Then stop...