It’s indeterminable, really;
The weight of a river.
You clasped my arm with your red gloved hand
And held me under as the water soaked me.
Poured more of it down my lungs and opened my lips gently,
As you tipped the silver basin when they parted
And I found it funny how you felt weightless when I was drowning there.
I remember thinking that I wish you’d taken your gloves off
So I could feel you as you drowned me.
And I remember thinking that I like how you just sort of…
Dissipate, when you leave me.
How your clothes slip and your hair falls and your skin loses all of its colour.
The wind takes you then,
Splits you into the pieces and the fragments of the person that you are,
Spits you out like dust to scatter and swirl,
Like the way you blew through me.
Dirty and dusty and swirling,
But so completely perfect.
It’s funny, though,
Because they told me you were dead.
They handed me a box and told me you were in it,
But they’d nailed shut the lid, so I never knew.
But now you’re back and say you have cancer and are dying all over again,
Yet you’ve got your arm around another woman.
But you’re still wearing your red gloves.
I wonder if she knows what you use them for.
I wonder if she knows that the last thing you’ll touch with them will be me.
I wonder if she knows that as you lie over me, drowning me in the water, you’re only holding one of my arms.
That I could have stopped you.
I could have taken my other arm and pushed you away.
But instead I touched your hand,
And as you filled my lungs with river,
Tenderly, so tenderly, I pulled off your glove.
And I held your hand in mine.
Just for a little.
Just for a second.
Just until I died, and you left me there, to go back to her.
At least she knows to look sad.
At least you do, too.
theskywillfall 