He gripped the pipe closely in his teeth. He didn't inhale. He was waiting for the right feeling to come over him--the same feeling that always did when he had the pipe in his teeth and his feet up on the coffee table.
Slowly, the feeling showed itself, cat-like, shy and timid. It broke into his consciousness slowly, like a single drop of pigment at the bottom of a glass of water which slowly diffuses and stains the purity of all. When he first became aware of it, the feeling had already fully gripped him, and he threw the pipe away and wept bitterly into his arm.
His wife found him there, curled in the fetal position and asleep. She picked up his father's pipe from the corner and put it back in the drawer where the couple kept their secret hurts--the love letters from his high school sweetheart, the locket her first husband gave her, the myriad photos of her failed first pregnancy, the stinging mail from his unsatisfied mother. She stepped over him to go to the kitchen, but stopped. Slowly she turned around again and walked back to the drawer. Taking the pipe, she sat down next to him on the floor.
She tried to cry. The effort wore her out.
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Okay, so I know that you're probably not writing about yourself, setting out to, but the first part resonates pretty strongly with how I feel you have felt, and the second part resonates pretty strongly with how I sometimes feel you feel.
ReplyDeleteThere is something strangely beautiful and dark and . . . well, hmm. This feels dysfunctional and also not. Because they seem trapped by their hurts, which is bad, but they keep them in the same drawer and share them, which seems like a good thing. This feels like something that happens sometimes but not always. They look trapped, but I don't think they are.
What? No, no, of course I'm not projecting.
It's certainly more healthy than "Because he wanted her to hurt less."
ReplyDeleteRobert, here is a fun thing for you. I turned your blog into a word cloud and it is one of the coolest word clouds in the history of ever. I did my blog too and the biggest words were "people," "want," and "money." It was lame and boring. The rest of the words were, like, "job" and "healthcare" and "fees." But your word cloud is pure magic and it represents your body of work. I love it.
ReplyDeleteSHARE:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4549081/like_lippincott
Also, that word cloud is available for everyone on earth to see and if you want it deleted, I have the link for you to delete it. Your words, your decision.
ReplyDeleteKaty: that word cloud is pretty epic. Super epic. Mega epic. It makes me happy. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteRobby: I thought of that one a lot when reading this. Funny, huh?
Not really; it's more like . . . this is the way I think people should do it, and that was the way people do sadness ANYWAY.
ReplyDeleteYeah. That's what I meant.
ReplyDelete