Eyes that last I saw in tears

Through division

Here in death's dream kingdom

The golden vision reappears

I see the eyes but not the tears

This is my affliction

This is my affliction

Eyes I shall not see again

Eyes of decision

Eyes I shall not see unless

At the door of death's other kingdom

Where, as in this,

The eyes outlast a little while

A little while outlast the tears

And hold us in derision.

T.S.Eliot

It’s night when I get home. The house is dark and cold - no rumbling television, no cooking smells. Cats once used to play on our lawn - something to do with the grass, you said - but they don’t any more.

I make beans on toast and sort through the mail. Solicitor’s bills, and the decree from the Coroner, saying you killed yourself. Easy as that. I let my toast go cold as I read the letter again and again, searching for the words to describe how I’m feeling, but I doubt they exist.

I wash the dishes and go to bed.

But it’s too early, and the street still wants to play. I’ve moved into the spare bedroom because the double bed we shared seems like a bed of nails now. Kids sing loudly outside, maybe drunk, and headlights glaze the closed curtains. I fetch a glass of water in bare feet, shivering the whole way, but don’t turn on the heating, since I don’t want comfort. Feeling anything would be nice right now.

I fall into a kind of fugue. Not sleep, and not awake. I imagine a life where none of this happened and you are still beside me in the double bed. You smile a lot, sunlight glints in your blue eyes. I smile with you, but my face feels strange for the expression. Then everything turns to shit again and you’re dead and I’m lying awake on an unaired mattress, while drunks walk past the window, singing loudly in Polish.

Shawna says the dinner party was an accident. They had left-over beef from a barbecue, some plonk and an empty house for the weekend. The party just materialised out of nowhere, and within a couple of hours there was a full table, and Terry was cooking something adventurous off the Internet. You and I were the third call she made. She could have turned to another page on her contacts list, phoned any number of worthies to invite instead. She tells me this when I lose the will to pretend to smile, when your ghost lingers over me like some shroud.Should I be wearing black, or shave my hair and beat my breasts and scratch my cheeks until they bleed? I think it would be better if I could throw myself on your pyre, so the wine can be passed and the second course can enter without any of those awkward silences.

The town clock strikes twelve, and I’m still awake. I’m annoyed at myself now, like I’ve moved on from salting the wounds to using bleach or acid to really do my nerves in. Like I’m following some pattern, a litany of pain that can only be expressed by a rote of loss and self-recrimination. I mean, there’s only so much self-pity one can take without cracking a smile at the image in the mirror, and feeling silly. Life goes on, they are all fond of saying.

Grief’s a thing to do with gusto. Grief’s a badge, an excuse for bad manners, a feeling that sticks to you like a parasite. It makes me withdraw from pity, snap at sympathy, and rage against anything resembling hope, love, happiness.

I sit up and make a note on my phone to get rid of the double bed. That will make it better.

But then there’s you. I loved your farting, your belching, leaving the toilet-seat up, the unshaven evening hugs. The way your mouth turned down when we argued, and shook your head in despair and walked away. I miss the sight of the back of your head when you left for work.

The party was a success, unlooked for, yet stillborn. Terry’s meal was okay, Shawna’s dessert wonderful, and the wine flowed free. We talked about life, bitched about those friends we shared, tattled on those we didn’t. That suburban ideal - acceptance, camaraderie. You drank too much, and I didn’t notice, too wrapped up in Shawna’s stories about the boss with octopus hands and the fallout from the banking crisis. By then, a taxi would have cost too much, the offer of a bed for the night seemed ridiculous, and fate slammed the door shut. We waved goodbye with hugs and air-kisses and glided home on wings of death.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that kind of life, I mean. I rather would have that than this, ignorant of solicitors and the local press, inquests and recriminations. Somewhere is a universe where it never happened, where you didn’t kill someone, then kill yourself in prison. I was looking down into my lap, you were driving too fast, and I just felt the bump. Something rolled up over the windshield, you bellowed, and we skidded to a stop across both lanes.

A police car wails down the road, and I hate them.

I stagger down the stairs, fetch the cigarettes from my coat pocket, fetch a plate from the draining board and stamp back to bed.

The jury’s verdict, I can’t sleep.

Escaping prison, they’re calling it now. But at least you didn’t leave me to find you. I watched you wilting under pressure, and hated myself for not lifting a finger. I thought you had my back, would keep the cogs moving while I felt sorry for myself, while, in fact, you were falling to pieces.

They say you don’t get over someone until you’ve spent a time apart equal to the time you were together, so I’m not going to be rid of you until my forties. That seems like a life away, an impossible conspiracy when I won’t miss you and I will be … irretrievably older.

I stare at the magnolia-painted walls, with the damp patch you said you were always going to fix. That happens a lot now. I stare at small thing and compare them to my life, in abject wonder at how such small, horribly plain things hold such meaning when you aren’t there to distract me. A puddle, a broken bottle on the street, or a steaming tea bag on the kitchen counter. Forgotten, used up, its’ only destiny a bin, and then landfill.

Life is too empty without you. And I’m struggling. Really struggling.