I Saw the Announcement in the Paper
I find I’m a magnet. These kinds seek me out. I offer them a ripe pomegranate or a slice of pumpernickel. Sitting on the front stoop or pacing around the raised garden beds, we talk. No, they talk; I listen. I say “I love you” and “I’ll always be here for you.”
Three times now, I’ve made this mistake.
My North Face jacket would be warmer, but today I reject the synthetic. I shuffle my arms into a pale blue terry cloth bathrobe and take a walk down the drive. I pass by the leafless wild rose bush. Allured, I pause to pluck a hard crimson rosehip and pop it into my mouth. Like a tiny, earthy tasting fireball, I suck on it, then roll it over my teeth and across my gums.
The autumnal winds pick up, caress my cheek, and the belt ties whirl around. I shove my fists into the deep pockets. Keep moving. I’m going to a meeting. I saw the announcement in the paper and knew I had to attend. Before I inadvertently off someone else I think I know, I want to ask how not to do that. Learn how to listen correctly. More than that – I want to rid myself of these extreme poles.
I slide open the shed door to search for gloves. I reject the pretty new canvas ones and the hole pocked backups. I decide to go with naked hands, fingers without rings, unencumbered.
In the past, there was a time when I didn’t have an answering machine or caller ID. Once I gave someone my cell number but got a new phone and had no way to tell him I’d changed it. Recently, a call came from Texas and I knew – in my heart – who it was but didn’t feel like discussing why I was still married to a man who still never reads my words. So I didn’t pick up.
Ten days later, he was dead. Things went further south. The week after his wake, which I couldn’t attend, his girlfriend was gone, too. The last Facebook photo of her shows a candle in the forefront, her bowed head, pain. It is the gospel of giving up. I wonder, “Should that be me, too?”
At the end of the driveway, in my tattered bathrobe, I wait for my ride to the Suicide Loss Day Program. Doors open at noon. The program starts at one. I registered; I arranged for a ride; I’m going. I hope to find others who share my guilt and ask them how they cope. I want to see what they choose to wear for their boisterous armor. The meeting is being held at the Psych Center. It’s sprung on me that if I am insane, at least I’m dressed properly.
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T. L. Sherwood lives by Eighteen Mile Creek in western New York, not far from Buffalo. She is the Assistant Editor at r.kv.r.y. Quarterly Literary Journal and both a reader and interviewer at Literary Orphans. She is the 2015 Gover Prize winner and her blog, Creekside Reflections, can be found here.