The Bed Where It Happened
Winter
Alphonse Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939)
Do you think clouds remember what shapes and forms they’ve taken?
Do you assume tomorrow while watching today’s sunset?
I remember the afternoon we met, but I don’t remember anything else from the day. How the day had begun and ended seemed diluted, as the half hour of our encounter absorbed the colours of the rest of the day and became a concentrated spot of swollen vibrancy. The bright purple of your diamond-patterned shirt under the clear sky; your uncut black hair casually combed back and bending in the occasional breeze; the awkward skinniness of your disproportionately long legs as you walked over—every granular detail tangible at the precipice of what seemed like yesterday. But I tossed away the memory of your scent one month after moving out. Perhaps it was like baby shampoo, or something supposedly soothing, but it eluded me, and I rather it remain so.
A long time ago I asked you if you remembered what I wore the day we met, and you took a moment to adjust the pillow before turning to me to say, “I thought you were very attractive.” I laughed, booped you on the nose and snuggled close, then waited to hear your breathing become predictable. I never expected you to become this unpredictable.
My bamboo pillowcase, I hope it went to a good home. The fabric was quite cooling on the skin, like more affordable silk. You always had your eyes on a different fabric, hadn’t you?
After what happened, I thought it must be the sex. Perhaps you finally figured out I was too nice to tell you what a distorted and disappointing penis you have. I did love you wholeheartedly, and I did come to love your stub of a penis because that had been how I loved. But between the job and your libido, you weren’t the one bringing bread to the table. Have you seen the movie Chicago? I wonder how in our years together, this movie never came up in our conversation. I must have been treading carefully around any allusion to the topic of small genitals. In the movie, Catherine Zeta-Jones' character, Velma, held up a lipstick to the mirror and used it as a representation of her lover’s penis. Everytime I think of yours, I think of her lipstick: twist it a bit more down, a bit more, smaller, smaller, yes, this miniscule piece of flesh.
You said you don’t know why you did it. You never knew why you did it. Perhaps at this point in our lives, the reason no longer matters, wouldn’t you say? It’s what comes after.
You were like a movie adaptation of a book, where all the characters were poorly cast and inaccurate, and the plot deviated significantly from the beloved original, as though someone wanted merely to make quick cash, not a care of its audience nor the damage of reputation, since there was none to lose anyways.
The original was brimming with potential. You knew the words to say, just not the actions to follow up with; you held a mirror to my mistakes, but held a cracked one to your own; you were a master at writing scenes, but they were the ideal without you in them; you spew out advice like a wise sage, but no one could make you take your own pill. In the end, you died by your own hand, you wrote your own closing lines.
When you asked me not to tell Lily and your parents, I blinked. Blood rushed from my head and into my legs, suddenly they seemed as heavy as the king-size mattress I lifted to change the bedsheets that night. I wanted to collapse, fold myself into the nearest crevice, into Lily’s paper crane on the dresser. But Lily, Lily needs justice.
She is only four, my love. How could you do this to her? What about the life she was promised to have with her father? The years of love just beginning to be fostered?
Ah, please stop trying to wriggle out of the noose you made for yourself, there is no use. I’ve already tightened up the screws of the fan before we started and tested the weight. I find it rather appropriate, your last act of redemption. After all, this is the bed where it happened, isn’t it?
I’ll simply push the bed back when you are done kicking; afterwards, I’ll scrub off those lines on the floor. I brought my own stain remover just in case—I knew you would not have one in the house.
Unlike you, I am careful; unlike you, I am not impulsive—I have been planning this since the day I lifted our heavy mattress on my own again. Did you even notice I was bruised from doing everything by myself? Did you realize it had become another one of those nights where no chores were done in our home and Lily was hungry again? I only wanted to come home. It was nice to finally know where your unemployed dick had been up to. It was really quite nice.
It’s fine. The best part of the plan is when it comes together at the end, and you never did know how to put in any effort. You had empty words, and I am full of actions.
Yes, I will never tell Lily, and neither will you.
FIN