Bleed

Brandished

Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash

I can’t write you anymore. You haunt me, steal my words, halt my pen, make the ink run dry. I scratch at the paper, bury the ballpoint into its surface, tear at it, waiting for the notebook to bleed.

I bleed. Inside. My eyes burn with the effort of staring, unable to blink in case the words make an appearance. Then disappear without witness, like you did, into the fog.

The rain was steady that day, drumming on the trailer’s metal roof, obscuring the view of the pine trees stretching as far as the eye ought to see on a clear day.

Ought to see, but won’t, most times.

I’d not had a clear day with you. I was lonely with you stealing my thoughts, taking up space in my head, not allowing me time to think, to make sense of it all.

You brandished your sons at me like a weapon, pointing at that single line, jabbing it with your index finger, the scar just above the nail bed livid as usual. A trophy of the bar fight, along with the shard of brown beer bottle glass lying on the shelf above the bathroom sink. It still has your blood on it, crusted, black, old.

You kept it like a souvenir. Parading your violence. Parading your sons like piñatas, like sweet, sweet Virgin Mary. Parading my failure. That single blue line.

A whole year’s worth.

A whole twelve months of full moons, of clocks springing forward and back, of bulbs sprouting and dying in the pots outside, no longer tended by anyone, least of all me. I don’t have the nurturing genes.

Clearly.

Those sons of yours. You left a photo of them in the dinette, propped up against a pack of Marlboros and a cheap plastic lighter. Old salt granules on the red Formica. You didn’t clean the table. You took the ashtray.

You were like that.

So, you disappeared into the fog. And I can’t write you anymore. The notebook doesn’t bleed, but I do.

Not just inside, but outside, flowing my uselessness into the crotch of my knock-off 501s. No need for another single blue line to tell me that I don’t nurture. Some people weren’t meant to be.

I stand up, grab a cloth, wipe my failure from the vinyl seat. I lick my finger, just a little. What might have been. The evidence almost disappears, leaving a faint stain, like rust on metal.

Just like you.