She’s gone. Stop knocking.

What did I do today.

I walked through Costco
dissociated,
watching a woman who looked like me
push a cart
like this is the world.
Like this is what we’re doing.
Like I belong here
and not face down in the dirt
teeth full of it
unable to stand.

How.

I didn’t end up
at the bottom of an empty fifth.
I didn’t drink at all.

How.

I didn’t tear every stand down
in that store that wants my life force
and has never once
cared if I live.

I didn’t drive off the road
toward that better place
you reference
like you’ve been
and it’s worth the trip.

How.

That’s what I didn’t do.
Is this it.
You want to call that
recovery.

She is not coming back.
I need you to hear that.

The one who bent toward reason.
Who made the appropriate sounds.
Who handed you something
shaped like hope
so you didn’t have to feel
what this actually is —

she left
when the world proved itself
and I watched her go
and I did not
follow her back.

There is no back.
Back is a lie
you need
so you don’t have to sit
in the only accurate response —

shock.

How is anyone
just doing this.
How can I eat.
How can I keep waking up
to this fluorescent repetition
this conveyor belt of hours
to the store
and the store
and the store
and asking and answering
and performing
the shape of a life
ten months after mine
ended.

Last night
I rested my head on his chest
and we moved
like time hadn’t broken.

I told him everything
without translation
without making it useful
without shaping it
into something you could survive hearing.

He said
this is just how we have to be now.

That he finds people
like this.
That he meets them
in their sleep.

So don’t tell me
this is the real world
because it’s the one
we perform in daylight.

The other one
is where I touch him.

Sanity is your word
for shut up.
For stop making me look.
For come back to where I am
so I don’t have to come
where you are.

I won’t.

You want truth you can digest.
Get indigestion.

There is no higher power.
No reason.
No arc.
No meaning we didn’t manufacture
to keep from lying down
in the middle of the road
and just
stopping.

I looked underneath everything
you handed me
and found nothing
and the nothing
was the first honest thing
I’d touched
in years.

I’m staying there.

You shine light on what you’re clinging to
and call it healing
and need me to call it that too
because if I don’t
what does that mean
about you
and what you chose
and what you’re still choosing
right now
in the light
with your back
to all of this.

I see you.
I’m not joining you.

I choose the dark
because that’s where she is.

Ten months under
and my heart never came back up
and I’m done
pretending it did
for your comfort.

This is how I touch death.
This is where the truth lives.
Not transcendent.
Not transformed.
Just true.

Madness.
Yes.
The only state
that fits what I’ve been handed.
The only one
I won’t metabolize
into something easier
for you to swallow.

You wanted her back.

You’ll get this instead —
a woman who knows now
what’s underneath
your order
your belief
your careful
curated
light —

and chose
to stay in the dark
where the knowing is.