“Sir, I know this is difficult.”

“It’s preposterous!”

“Now that’s a good final phrase.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth about final phrases! I have plenty of phrases left!”

He forced the words out of his mouth and over the counter towards the employee.

The he is named Seymour. Works in an advertising firm and makes enough to not be completely underwater in a small city apartment, three floors up from ground level and three floors down from the top. He licks his index finger before turning pages and hasn’t drunk a glass of water since last August. Seymour writes his name in all uppercase, so in a sense, none of it is uppercase and one could say he doesn’t capitalize his letters at all. Breakfast consists of coffee. Lunch is coffee yet again. Dinner is typically found as over-salted meatloaf, easily heated in a microwave oven, and cheap booze. His favorite movie is How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The War and his favorite book, in an ironic sense only, is the Bible. Saturdays are spent at the park, Sundays with his mother. When he was nine, he gave a bag of lentils to a girl, ran away, and cried. This was his first and only love. Marcia. She lives next door to his mother. Seymour dislikes cats, his favorite color is purple, and he believes Nietzsche is God.

The man on the other side of the counter remarked, “I’m afraid it’s fewer, around two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven words, to be exact.”

While two thousand is a large number, please keep in mind, the average male says around seven thousand words daily and eight hundred million in a fifty-year span. In a world where every word counts, people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea of conservation.

Patience and thoughtfulness are virtues, and waste is the greatest sin, but is the most human thing. From birth, they are instructed to live wisely; to count their words and make their words count. Save their words for the important moments, but yet, they waste it, and that comes at a price. So they live a life where out of every hundred words, maybe only three counts, but this life isn’t so different or unworldly from our own.

Seymour snapped at the man, “Again, that’s impossible! There is no way in hell-”

“Two thousand nine hundred and seventy.”

“-I’ve run out! Is my average shorter? Did something happen along my lifespan to shorten my number? Did I make a mistake? Are you shitting me right now? I only have three thousand words?”

“Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-four.”

“Whatever.”

“Two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three and have a nice day. Next!”

The redhead with the wide hips stood up and took his place. She passed him with a wink. The ladies behind her commented on Seymour as he stood there in disbelief.

“My nephew’s word count dropped, and he passed after a month.”

Seymour looked back towards the redhead, snapping himself out of the fog the ladies’ gossip had put him in by the tapping of her shoes. He traveled from the heel of her foot to the top of her skirt all the way out the door.

Everything seemed louder than before. It might have been his sudden realization that the time he had left on this earth was up to his discretion. Or the fact the tamale cart blocking the entrance to his building was half off this Wednesday, but either way, the sounds that used to harmonize with his phone calls and discussions with friends now carry the shrill snap of a belt. But that’s in two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three words. That’s a large number. That’s plenty of-

“Large Caramel Mocha.”

“God damn it, Mom!”

“Hey… Seymour again. Did you see my call?”’s, and by then it’s been ten minutes and he’s down sixteen words. Those could’ve been a handful of phrases to describe the ineffable. Phrases like-

“It’s okay,”

“I’m sorry,”

and, “Good morning Hope.”

However, Seymour ignored the parameters given. Seymour wasted a few more words than just the sixteen before. He, in fact, wasted five hundred and sixteen, and then the clock chimed six on a Sunday. He wasted five hundred and sixteen words just sitting on his alabaster white couch for a few days.

That couch was surrounded by some boxes of stuff from his mother’s and two driftwood end tables. In the back was a small, barren kitchen and through that the bathroom. Then back through the living room/dining room/office was Seymour’s bedroom. Seymour’s repulsive, sodden with some…. something? just an overall grotesque bedroom. It might have been fine, slightly damp, but fine bedroom if you could ignore the piles of useless literature from David Hume to John Stuart Mill that gave Seymour an ego and “intellect” to shame, and the overwhelming stench of spoiled, canned espresso, but this is nowhere near important.

What’s important is Seymour’s dismissal of the idea of brevity. What’s important is Seymour’s irresponsibility and ability to lie to himself and others. What’s important is Seymour’s belief that beauty is held in the form of a woman who makes Miss America look like a mockery. In his words. His only interaction with her was the exchange of lentils and a throat full of tears.

Marcia’s gaze was marked by a scarlet lust. The way she threw her hair over her shoulder seemed to say, “and I love you! I swear that’s true,” but only a fool would believe that.

Seymour is an absolute fool. For more than just that one reason. Some of those reasons being he never actually closes the lid on the milk container and doesn’t wear matching socks. But it doesn’t matter. This man is a fool beyond any doubt. He’s the type of fool to write sappy, but shitty, love stories and cry over the music he first heard as a child. He’s the type of fool to never buy a present for his friend’s birthday and say every time they meet, “I left it at home!” He might be smart, but he’s in no shape wise. The type of fool to not just like something, but always let it consume him. He’s the type of fool who says he’s happy, yet wears a smile full of heartbreak. (But can one feel heartbreak, or sympathize, if they’ve never been in love?)

Seymour, as a child, used to believe that plants were psychic. Something that intricate and beautiful couldn’t look that way without paying the price. The pain of secrets. He respected each flower, shrub, and sapling separately, for they each had very important jobs and positions in whichever garden, park, or yard they inhabited. Corsican Mint, a little green, viny thing, always stood out amongst the rest, though. Its small, little curls and details choked out the violets and hyacinths in their battle for beauty. The plant replicated an artist’s brushstroke, the scenery for a landscape of heaven. His mother’s backyard was covered in them. They snaked from under the deck onto tree roots and then on to invade the neighbors’ yards. They blanketed the walk from his building, through the park, to his mother’s and Marcia’s. On the walk to his mother’s, noticed Marcia had cut them all down.

His mother’s brisket was bad and so was cards. The cards would flit over his fingertips like the heartbeat of a scared kitten. King of Hearts. Seven of Diamonds. Jack. Ace. Two. Queen. Queen. Five. Seven again. Some afternoons he swears he can see his heart lost in the shuffle, jammed between the gray cards. But no one wants to think about the neighbor girl while discussing office issues and playing cards.

God, did he not want to think about her and her thirteenth birthday. He wasn’t invited. She wore this tight, purple top. It might have had a lace-like embroidery at the top. He never got close enough and will never get close enough to tell. He remembers seeing her at homecoming. He would’ve killed to be her date. Rumor states that she and David MacCaffee ditched junior year to attend a frat party, and that’s how David got arrested. Or about how Seymour found a photo of her in the-

Back to the cards and his mother. He explained the situation to his mother, leaving him at two thousand and four words. The rest of the afternoon was silent except for the ring of the teakettle. He left his mother’s with one word less.

“Goodbye.”

Then, passing Marcia’s, muttered three more words.

“I love you.” At least, he thought he did. There’s a difference between someone feeling like the sun and someone feeling like an LED light that attracts every fly and mosquito. With hair that blonde, she could be nothing more than an LED light.

A bit of background might be necessary. When Seymour was nine, he went to the farmer’s market with his mother. Fresh fruits, vegetables, and lentils. The bag of lentils he gave the girl. The bag of lentils he gave Marcia. This was when life couldn’t be harsher than a hug. But nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than seemed. Nostalgia painted Marcia as a being like Aphrodite, a deity amongst men. It was almost unfair the way Seymour saw her. To be put on such a pedestal is difficult, especially living up to it. She wasn’t human.

But that doesn’t matter because Seymour loved her, or his idea of her. He was so infatuated with this burning love for Marcia that he never read the phrase written on his cup by the girl at the coffee stand in the park. His love threw that poor little cup and that poor little phone number into the trash right in front of her. “718-000-4301. Call me :) -Hope.” Let’s just say her hope was crushed. But that’s the funny thing about Hope. She never stopped trying. Four weeks went by and every Sunday afternoon on the way back from Seymour’s mother’s, she would hand him a styrofoam cup with a little poem or sentence scrawled on the side, each week a little bolder than the next. On the fifth week, though, he didn’t finish his coffee in the park. Seymour carried it all the way up to the third floor and set the cup down in front of his alabaster white couch. He does not use coasters.

Seymour returned from the grocery store on a Tuesday afternoon with seven hundred words left. It doesn’t matter how he got to seven hundred words. It doesn’t matter how he got to his original three thousand words, or why anyone would have just three hundred words until the end of their life. Yes, it might be confusing, but that isn’t the point. The point is to tell the story of Seymour, not explain a word count. All that matters is what happened with his three thousand, two thousand nine hundred and thirty-three, or seven hundred words.

Seymour sat his bags on the counter and found his place in front of the television. He had nothing better to do with his time. He quit his job to save himself quite a few words or else he never would have been alive to place the cup from Hope on the table in front of him. But he did. He placed the cup on the table Sunday afternoon and now, two days later, he picked it up to throw it away. “I want to spend the rest of my sunsets with you. -Hope.” She was pretty bold at this point. Hope thought that he would never actually read them.

Seymour chuckled. He couldn’t place Hope if she was in a crowd. She searched for him in crowds. Seymour and Marcia were more alike than Seymour would ever dream. The only difference is Seymour was Hope’s sun. This is the closest they would ever be.

Sometimes people tire of being lonely. Seymour wouldn’t mind Hope for a while. Everyone needs a bit of Hope and that need consumed her. Killed her. But not everyone deserves it.

The next Sunday, on the way back from his mother’s and Marcia’s, he walked up to the coffee stand with his phone number in hand and a five-dollar bill. He left with a lukewarm cup of black coffee.

“Hi… Is this Seymour?” No response. Well, he can’t give one. That would be wasteful.

“Um, would you like to go get lunch sometime, or maybe we can go grab a cup of coffee? Less shitty coffee?”

“Sure.” Five hundred and eighty-nine words left.

“Okay, um, does Thursday at three work? I can meet you outside your building. I, uh, I see you go there every Sunday. I can only assume it’s your place, I mean. I sound stupid. Sorry. I’ll see you there at three?” The tapping of her foot could be heard through the phone. For a society with few words to waste, she sure says quite a few ’um’s.

“That works.” Five hundred and eighty-seven.

He sat down three words lighter and hoping to prompt some jealousy out of Marcia. The worst part about her is the fact his mother had her over every afternoon to gossip and discuss all the mess Seymour has gotten himself into recently, whether it be financially or with the grease fire from last month. But this means that it won’t be more than a few days before Marcia knows he’s finally gotten over her. It might have taken thirty-two years. And he might not be over her, but she doesn’t know that. Surely she doesn’t give in to him because she likes the attention. After all, that’s how women work. What would her reason be to not want Seymour’s company? There is not a single rational reason! Now that she will know Seymour doesn’t want her, she will just have to want him.

Seymour was disappointed to see Hope doesn’t drink coffee. Why work at a coffee stand if you don’t like coffee, let alone ask someone on a coffee date? But that was the only issue he could find with her. Hope talked a lot. It filled the silence in his head. She talked enough for both of them. Hope liked to just wander in silence with him sometimes, and that was just as nice. The coffee date turned into dinner dates and picnic dates and the movies and downtown and her apartment, but he had hope that Marcia would come around. He would hold Hope until Marcia came around.

Sometimes Seymour forgot about Marcia. Hope would sit across from him discussing her “insufferable bitch” of a coworker, and he would look at her. He would look at the way she clenched her hands when excited or infuriated. His eyes would follow the piece of hair that falls in front of her face as she laughs and he could feel himself forgetting Marcia. Hope became lazy smiles, warm hands, old shirts, running down staircases, and he was terribly, absolutely, irreversibly infatuated with her. But because he had hope, he still thought of Marcia. Hope was always an afterthought, something taken for granted.

Quite a few months had gone by. He had said fifteen words in total to Hope. However, he had said four hundred and thirty words over those few months. With each word of his, she returned with an average of thirty-two. She knew he didn’t have many words left. Her uncle passed not too long ago from the same loss of words. It isn’t uncommon. Hope never knew how many words he wasted on everyone but her. A hundred and forty-seven words left.

The phone rang.

“Hey! I was just wondering if you are still open to going to my mom’s on Saturday? You don’t need to say anything, just, just be there? Okay, thank you, bye!” but before she hung up, a few words slipped out. A few that she couldn’t keep in. These would’ve been a waste if left unsaid.

“Love you!”

Seymour sat there. He couldn’t say it back. He wouldn’t say it back. So he hung up. Ten words, three dates with Hope, and two days later, the phone rang again.

“Hi. Seymour, correct?”

Marcia’s voice sang through the speaker, and Seymour sat dumbfounded. A wash of guilt covered him. He felt as repulsive and disgusting as someone feels after touching the damp food conglomerated on the side of the sink after washing the dishes.

“Yes.”

“Yea, so the church is having a potluck Saturday and your mom asked me to remind you. I’m over helping her with the casserole.”

“I’ll be there.”

“All right, thanks, and uh, have a good afternoon, Seymour.”

No matter how disgusted he was with himself, hearing her say his name melted him onto the floor into a puddle of vomit and bile heavy with the scent of want. He didn’t need hope anymore. He had Marcia. He didn’t need Hope anymore. He had Marcia! Saturday couldn’t arrive any sooner. He walked himself into that church carrying a steady stature and one hundred and forty-four words.

Seymour tried to talk himself into her heart all day. He showered her with words he kept and cherished. Words he had been saving for someone he loved. Each word got him ahead of himself and Seymour forgot the girl who made him forget Marcia. Every so often he could see his Hope. Seymour realized far too late that he had five words left. Seymour realized he had three words left when he saw Marcia’s new boyfriend and heard her introduce him to the congregation. Guilt has never felt heavier. He felt alone. He had nothing. He needed some Hope. He had had hope. He took those three thousand words wasted on everything but Hope and put them on paper, well, napkin. These words were a waste.

The phone rang again, but this time he was calling her.

“You’ve made your choice, Seymour, and there’s nothing I can do,” she yelled. “I don’t think you want me in your life anymore. I don’t think you wanted me in your life at all. I was just. God, Seymour!” As angry as she was, she still talked enough for the both of them. “And I will have to find a way to live with that. You said, what did you say? You said nothing! I tell you I love you and you say nothing! I don’t want to be a bandage. I don’t want to be a mere courtesy, Seymour! You won’t hear from me again Seymour and don’t you worry--” her words faded out and all Seymour could hear was the pounding of the tear-speckled, ink-marked napkins in front of him. It’s difficult to love someone when you have never been in love. To navigate it is a nightmare.

To the girl who wonders if I think about her,

I do. I will tell the stars about you.

This is difficult to write. Hell, this is difficult to think about, but I’m brutally in love with you. I mean, I think I am. All I know is I hate myself because I wasted myself and it wasn’t on you. I was a coward and an idiot.

I remember when you meant nothing to me. I wasn’t aware of your existence, but now you are the reason I have these awful bags under my eyes. I stay up till 4am thinking about you, but I never could acknowledge it. It’s bizarre how the mind works. I needed you, but I never wanted you. People always say that it hurts at night and apparently screaming into your pillow at 3am is the equivalent of heartbreak and the feeling love leaves you with. But sometimes it’s 9am on a Tuesday and the sound of the toaster and the smell of earl grey tea that leaves you unable to move your hands. I wonder… I wonder if I was drunk in a room full of all the people I’ve loved whose arms would I run into. I would bet a two-dollar, large, black coffee they would be yours.

From,

Those who dare to have Hope

“--about me because I will be okay. I have to be! I can’t sit here waiting for the day you get over that obsession and finally crawl back to me! I can’t be a fuckin-”

“God damn it!” he cried and suddenly he had zero words left.

His mother hand-delivered the letter to Hope. She wasn’t sad. She was numb and numb, she knew, was somehow worse. Granted, she was simply Seymour’s experiment. His lesson on love. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The girl crumpled him up and tossed him into the trash can before her shift.

The him was named Seymour. Worked in an advertising firm and made enough to not be completely underwater in a small city apartment, three floors up from ground level and three floors down from the top. He licked his index finger before turning pages and hadn’t drunk a glass of water since last August. Seymour wrote his name in all uppercase, so in a sense, none of it is uppercase and one could say he didn’t capitalize his letters at all. Breakfast consisted of coffee. Lunch was coffee yet again. Dinner was typically found as over-salted meatloaf, easily heated in a microwave oven and cheap booze. His favorite movie was How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The War and his favorite book, only in an ironic sense, was the Bible. Saturdays were spent at the park, Sundays with his mother. When he was nine, he gave a bag of lentils to a girl, ran away, and cried. This was his first, but not only, love. Marcia. She lives next door to his mother. Seymour disliked cats. His favorite color was purple, and he believed Nietzsche was God. And he forgot, then lost, Hope.

5:00 PM

The little scrap adorned with a pixel of some fruits felt heavy in my mouth. Not bitter. Rebecca across the hall said something about it being bitter. I don’t remember if it’s a good or bad thing. The paper sat for a second on my tongue, a little dry and unusual, but was gone by the time I reached the kitchen.

In my twenties, the idea of me taking drugs was unseemly. I was a stand up member of society. Not one who would win a Nobel Prize any day or would make a high school history book, but an accountant. I took part in living the way one should live. I worked odd labor jobs until school. That was interrupted, but a girl’s dad gave me a chance. Her hair bounced and twinkled like a dancer in the spotlight. My hair was stick straight, thin, and destined to fall out in twenty years; I do not know what she saw. Colette waltzed up to me one day, many many years ago, as I looked at the flowers in a florist’s shop and stated, “Buy me one and I’ll go to lunch with you.” I didn’t even notice her before her sore interruption. But a smile drifted up my face, warming my cheeks with a soft rosy glow of love. I nodded silently and she followed behind me as I brought a pink carnation to the counter. We went to a nice diner a door down. She got tea and pancakes for us to split. And that was that. Sometimes I wish we never split those damned pancakes. I cannot bring myself to eat pancakes anymore, nor many other things. I find myself to be tired, emotionally and physically, of living. Sometimes I wonder if that is how she felt. I wonder if she truly found that peace she seemed to be searching for.

We had two kids, Maryanne and Addison, or Addie, as she used to demand to be called. Addison was too formal for my lil’ drama queen. But now she is thirty-six and has her own kid with a lawyer a few hours south. Maryanne and I have not spoken since Thanksgiving three years ago. Colette had passed a week before.

Colette needed me. I needed her. She was my everything from the moment I met her. I didn’t know what to do when she decided she wanted to leave this world. I do not know what made her so tired or what made her feel so fragile. Until the day she left, I never felt old. We may have been far past our biological prime, but we still had so much time left and so many memories. She left our grandkids and our daughters and somehow they are mad at me. Maryanne swore I should’ve always seen she needed help, that this would happen. That her poor mood and bleak behavior were a warning sign.

I could always eventually cheer her up. It may have taken a few days or longer sometimes, but I couldn’t this time. I didn’t. I don’t know if I tried hard enough. I was fed up with her sitting stale with buzzing flickers of some neon people on the TV casting shadows on her face. She stole all the blankets and plates would pile up. I loved her. I did. But the one time I should’ve been there more than anything, I decided to not take her seriously. I was mad that she was seeing the world through this myopic lens of negativity.

Why did I do this? I kept asking myself. My youth was over. It isn’t my turn to be rowdy or wild anymore. Plus, that never was never really me. Colette and I met in California in the early seventies, if that answers any questions about her. She needed a ride back home after heading a few states away for band. When a girl like that leans over the hood of your car at a gas station? You say yes. While I drove, she wrote a bucket list in this notebook she had. Swearing, we were karmic and destined to finish them all. That we would and under no circumstance would there be a box left unchecked. We were kids, so most were silly looking back on it, but sweet. I hate myself for arguing some were unrealistic. She eventually scribbled those off the page and I’d give anything to see what was under those angry lines. I don’t remember too many of those anymore. But we went to the Grand Canyon and the Atlantic Ocean. We hitchhiked and partied together. We took our kids to Disney Land. We got married on the beach. We painted our kitchen cabinets yellow. The only thing I could buy to answer my question was Colette’s face. I promised her so much. The very least I could do in the last months or weeks or even days I have left is to keep a promise or two. I crumbled the soft, aged paper of the forty-year-old dinner napkin I had in my hands without even glancing at the notes on there. It felt like a tumor, the way it rested against my thigh, an infection stuck in my pocket.

I glanced towards the scattered papers, MRI scans, receipts, and bills on my coffee table. They are all stained from Sunday. I spilled my mug. It has gotten heavy nowadays. The mug is still tipped over. I couldn’t bring myself to clean it up. I cannot bring myself to do much anymore. The walls are all tan now; it’s a decent color, yet, not the best. Addison and Maryanne painted the whole place for us a while back as a gift. The floor squeaks as I shift my weight to grab the latest file. I stare at the black, oozing rot on the paper. I let myself go after Colette. She would be proud, though. I’m finally doing a few things I had promised her when we were young, with hearts as empty to the world as a new journal to a poet.

These last few years, since the passing of my dearest Colette, the world feels heavy. Much like she used to describe the few months before her accident. I feel the oxygen in the air sticking to me like flies stick to a horse. And the trees have lost their green even though it’s July. There is a puddle outside of our apartment complex that won’t dry up. And I can never bring myself to turn the lights on in my apartment. I guess at my age, I should expect myself to be this tired.

6:00 PM

What is that?

What is that sound?

“Mary Anne! Stop slamming your door!”

Wait.

Please go away.

Mary Anne isn’t here and the knocking likely isn’t and that shadow that has been staring at me for the last ten minutes isn’t real either, nor the wave of the walls nor the buzzing. The buzzing is not real. The buzzing is not real. The buzzing is not real the buzzing is not real the buzzing is no-

“Mr. Regdell! How are you hangin’?”

It is Rebecca. Rebecca Young. It is Rebecca from across the hall. Slowly, I rise from my chair and the world shifts from under me. I can feel the sun rising in Australia.

The door handle slips out of my hand. It resembled a mass of that playing dough the girls used to have. God if only I could figure out how to open this god damn-

“Isn’t your key under the mat? I’ve been watching the door handle bobble for like five minutes man, can I just let myself in?”

I try to orchestrate my brain to work in conjunction with my mouth but before I can agree, she is on my couch with my key in her hand.

7:00 PM

Rebecca has eyes much like Colette. They remind me of the pools of honey she would leave on the counter after making tea. Rebecca acts like Mary Anne, but I am yet to be on her bad side. They both happen to be stubborn, loud, and abrasive. In Rebecca’s case, what else comes with youth besides just that. I met Rebecca a long time ago when she was around twelve. Her and her mother moved across the street and after Colette and I experienced months of the mother’s screaming, we invited the girl over for dinner and she soon became a fixture in our home. I remember her playing with Addie’s old Barbies that just sat in a box in her closet after she moved away to that university in Pennsylvania.

She used to sit in the kitchen at the round table that used to be in the corner of the kitchen, near the windows, with them all set up in their plastic shoes and nylon skirts. The dolls would argue about each other’s boyfriends or friend drama. Colette would sit with her, silently stitching a new coat out of some scraps of fabric she found in the closet. As Rebecca got older, the barbies were passed to the vintage toy shop down the street to pay for a new chair in the living room, this gaudy velvet green piece, and her entertainment became boys, friends, and some activities I cannot approve of. But I loved her like a daughter.

Rebecca was a good kid. The only one who came around anymore after Colette. I was bored. I was alone. And she took care of me like I used to take care of her.

She’s the only one I told.

8:00 PM

The couch feels like marshmallows and Addie’s old bunny named Bonnet.

Everytime I look at the ceiling, I swear it is dripping onto me. I can see it. I swear it is.

“Mr. Regdell, how are you doing?” she interrupted while I slipped in between the cushions into a far memory of mine.

I watched Colette from the door as she sat at the piano in the office, playing some beautiful, improvised melody. The light from the window, even though it faced a brick wall, fell on her profile and graying hair, making her glow. My god, she was iridescent. I could never look away. She was beautiful. Not just looks, even though she was, in her youth and still is, a stunner, but in who she was.

“What do you think,” she chirped from slouched over the piano keys.

“Wonderful,” were the only words that came to my lips. Maybe I was describing the music, maybe her, I still don’t know.

“Not yet,” she stated. Even as we aged, her passion never did. It remained as green as Persephone. That’s who Colette was. Passionate. While she never liked living much, she was thrilled with everything life had to offer: music, art, theatre. Colette was everything I was not. Back in ’67, as soon as I saw her, I knew I wanted to spend every single moment I had left laughing with her, crying with her, protecting her, and with her.

But now I have more moments left, not many, but some, and she robbed me from spending those with her.

I can’t be angry at her. I knew she struggled. I knew she could feel her want to be here slipping away, and to be honest, I saw it too. Her eyes went from the color of a sun’s kiss to dull, uninterested, uninvested. I should’ve said something. I promised. I promised to be there and I did nothing. I didn’t think she would.

I knew.

I knew what would happen but I hoped she wouldn’t be as selfish as she was.

She wasn’t selfish, I regret saying that. She was just tired. So tired. So so tired. I’m so tired. I’m exhausted.

The couch spits me back out and I’m thrown back into an orange room with blinding yellow lights that buzz constantly. I can feel their hazey, sickly glow around me, sticking to the walls like a disease. I hate this room. I repainted it to get rid of the mural Colette had painted who knows how many years ago and now it reminds me of her even more.

I’m heavy with the weight of missing you, Colette. I- I can’t do this anymore but, but it isn’t much longer. There aren’t many days left. Those papers on the table say so. Maybe only a week, a month at most and I- I can’t wait. It went dark without you Colette and it wouldn’t stop raining. It rained and it rained and it rained every day without you. I know you would criticize me for the way I live. Without want, without love, without hope, but I can’t see anything past the day Mary Anne and I found you. I thought I had done enough for you and the girls. I thought I had shown you that the day I met you I found paradise. I thought you were happy with the world we had created, but no, I was never enough. I tried so hard and you didn't care. I was somehow too much when all I did was show you that I loved you. But I guess I was never what you wanted.

I was never what you wanted, was I?

“Huh?” Rebecca asked. I still don’t think my mind and mouth are working together yet. My tongue feels heavy. Maybe it will swell and strangle me.

9:00 PM

Rebecca had left for her boyfriend’s. And I sat. Sitting in this apartment alone, I felt her heavy on me, like a blanket suffocating my heart. It has been near fifteen years without her here but I still see her in the orange wallpaper in the kitchen with her bay window. She thought in colors and intangible ideas.

I sat staring at some picture Mary Anne had painted for me back when she was in art school. She had her mother’s talent. Addie had her mother’s temper. And they were both the best daughter’s I could have wished for. I just wish I was there more often for them or had corrected my mistakes earlier. Addie doesn’t see me much now. Mary Anne won’t see me.

I sat staring at the picture. The strokes of Mary Anne’s brush shifted and turned as I studied this painting for the first time. I was never the parent they needed. I was obsessed with providing for them and never thought about being there for them. I missed every first step, first word, first game, first dance performance. I didn’t just miss the firsts. I missed it all. I don’t know if I even spoke to my girls until around their sixth birthday. The paint shifted around my head, taunting me, mocking me for my failures. I’m sorry girls.

The walls began to breathe in rhythm with my aching heart.

10:00 PM

The floor felt like sand and my body like gelatin.

I inched my way down the hallway, past the office with the piano, past Addie and Mary Anne’s old rooms into mine. I stood staring at what my life had been boiled down to. Piles of papers, medical documents, and Colette’s old things. The box her wedding dress is in peaked out from under my bed and all of a sudden, Colette and I are dancing. Her blonde hair was curled perfectly behind her ears and her blue earrings sang as they knocked against the clips in her hair. I melted into her eyes and then onto the bed.

The papers on my bed swallowed me. Medical bills and treatment plans raced in front of my eyes as I could feel the bug in my brain pulsing as it ate me alive. I should’ve told the girls about the tumor.

The aged napkin fell out of my pocket and I stared at the empty boxes written in pink ink. Our bucket list. Unfolding the napkin, I stared at her handwriting. Colette wrote in the most wonderful cursive.

I promised her to go to the Grand Canyon. I promised her we would go horseback riding. I promised her that we would have a dog, a Cocker Spaniel. I promised we would attend a Fleetwood Mac concert and I promised her I’d finally agree to do LSD with her there. I also promised a son and a Porsche 917.

She was wild. I was not. She lived and I didn’t. I only survived.

We used to go on picnics where I’d watch her string dandelions together into a crown for the little girl we saw on the swings. She would tell me about her old boyfriend and the protests they would go to. Or about the time she got arrested in Portland. She told me all these wonderful stories, but at the time they scared me. She scared me, but in the best way.

I was a coward. I was afraid. I was afraid to commit to my responsibilities. I was afraid to show how much I cared. I didn’t show her or the girls. I thought I did by providing for them and bringing the food home to put on the table but I never provided my love.

I cheated Colette. She deserved a life where she could fulfill her wishes. She deserved someone to keep their promises. So here we are. I am staring at these words we wrote, hoping to find some remainder of her in my heart but I- I can’t remember what paradise felt like. The tears pooling in my eyes were oceans swallowing me, drowning me as they fell down my face.

11:00 PM

The walls breathed in synchrony with me and there I was, in the dark, swimming in my papers, tears, bills, and reminders of my dear Colette. I waded in the papers, trying to keep my neck above, trying not to be pulled under. I was Alice and she was my cake that seemingly was the cure but left me with a void too big. The papers lapped at my feet and arms, joking together about what fate I should meet. Their fluttering and crinkles mimicked laughter in my ears. I search for a light, I search for some place to rest, but I’ve been swimming for years at this point and I’ve grown tired.

What awaits me?

What will greet me?

Will I be met by the warm embrace of Colette or her stern stare or by an empty nothingness? Will the rot in my brain overcome me and leave me to the rats in the walls? Could I be found weeks after the day I journey off to find Colette? At my funeral, I am afraid I will have little to no attendees. I won't receive flowers on my grave on the anniversary but I guess it is karma. I was too mad at her for too long. Am I to only be dust and grass fertilizer? Am I destined to live through all this sorrow, heart ache, and isolation to only be alone yet again?

My thoughts, memories, and the papers cut deep into my skin as I attempted to sleep, but I laid there, curled up, sobbing.

12:00 AM

Suddenly, the color returns to the walls and I can see her dress draped over the rocking chair and Addie’s old sneakers in the closet. I soon feel the sticky glaze of the yellow lights and find myself clutching our list.

Her list.

I need to sleep. I can’t sleep despite how tired I am. Every time I close my eyes, I can see the veins in my eyelids pulsing against my corneas like the red river Addie told me about from Bible school. I am so tired. Am I always this tired? Have I always been this tired?

I know all that holds me is a thin, knit blanket but I swear I can feel the weight of her with me, on me. I miss her.

1:00 AM

I stare at the little piece of paper and throw it in the trash. I kept one promise. I loved her. I loved her as best I could. Damn did she tire me out, but I was never too tired. I do not believe that I can be faulted for loving too much. I turn to my side and close my eyes. Still, memories suffocate me. Maybe I am forever uneasy; possibly, I must pay penance of sorts. That thought brings me some peace. I can see myself resting soon. The walls have quieted down and I no longer am stuck within them and the photographs they wear. Though, I do hear Rebecca and her boyfriend fighting as he walks her up the stairs. It is faint like thoughts of Colette, at least for now. I wrap the knit blanket tighter, hoping to feel the shape of her again. Instead, I feel the presence of sleep. It creeps along through my toes and up to my eyes, and finally, I can rest.

My presence is louder than most.

I am two times more opinionated than everyone.

I carry myself a few inches shorter but steps ahead

However, three times I’ve tripped.

There are four scars on my legs

A missed step, a runaway razor, a razor with purpose, and a drunken night.

Five shots and I was living

Alcohol now makes me vomit regardless.

Six pieces of my home live everywhere but where I am at

I miss them.

Seven times I have done something I regret

Only seven (regret is for losers.)

Once, when I was eight, my sister broke my arm

My dad took me to the hospital after his shift because my mother forgot.

Nine pills and I was out that one night.

It will take me many decades to learn to count correctly.

Funerals are the most fun you will ever have. Laying there, dressed to impress. Warm and beautiful. Makeup is flawless and that pose! A pose that will bring your friends and family to tears. Those tears will drop onto your face and solidify the fact you are wanted. You are loved. All anyone wants is to be loved and those tears are proof.

Pictures of you will line the walls. Flowers sent to remember you will be laid around the body that will rot faster than those buds and stems. Or if you are cremated, I can almost guarantee those flowers will live in your sister-in-laws house on her dining room table up until the point you are shipped and packaged to your mother who couldn’t come. She is stuck in a nursing home in Nebraska. It’s a shame she couldn’t come, we all wish her the best, but soon she will know how much fun a funeral can be.