the night before, i spend too much on my costume, i daydream sad things to remain preemptively heartbroken, & Penance, by Emily Coppella
the night before, i spend too much on my costume
gouged out with flimsy plastic knives.
you give it to me on the hands that wrap around my shoulders when you open the door
for me.
and now my chin is in the beautiful trench of your collarbone.
i hear the tail-end of a conversation about 80s horror films
and i see five pairs of shoes along the entryway baseboards,
smudged with the remnants
left on the heels of people
i’m nervous to meet—a molecule
of gum, of grass, of crumb.
i will carry the feeling of you on my jaw for years.
you press a mini chocolate bar into my hand,
in this dim light it’s all foil.
in the darkness, i know i only came for you.
i daydream sad things to remain preemptively heartbroken
i am jealous of the tan lines on your skin from the time we spent apart. i am cracking spearmint gum between molars i can’t get you out of. i am feeling green smoke in my chest and meditating on loving-kindness loving-kindness loving-kindness loving your kind. i am listening for the text alert i set only for you and i am reading too many books about the garden i won’t have for 10 years. i am breaking down as we are breaking up—i am anti-emulsifying with you. i am eating too many potato chips. i am always remembering heartbreak although it hasn’t happened to me yet.
Penance
Sit on the worn couch.
In the funeral home.
By yourself (before they all arrive).
And free yourself to think
the disturbing thoughts that make it feel more complete.
You replay her dying:
at 6:00 a.m. when they found her,
at 6:15 a.m. when the ambulance arrived,
at 7:00 a.m. after the third failed resuscitation
and when the professionals declared she
would have extensive brain and organ damage if her heartbeat returned.
Where did her heartbeat go?
You almost laugh -- where did it run to?
Miracle — rotted through.
You created these timestamps
but the plot is crisper with them.
If you arrange these scenes for observation
you will not be left behind.
Because you can feast your mind on completion.
Now,
when everyone is gone and between sips of coffee and while sitting on a worn couch,
it’s all very final.
You weren’t actually there when it became final.
As penance, in the following days,
you retrace how it must have walked into the room.
It slipped in, really,
and took a seat politely.
The doctor said “pain-free”
and it came bearing a gift for a storyteller like you;
several days of editing these tableaus:
the hospital bed sheets were blue.
the doctor is now a man.
the ambulance came from the bottom of the street, not the top.
This is the process of picking off a scab.
The small flakes, satisfactory pain.
The pieces are platelets and they form fibrin,
these flimsy threads that spider across the surface of a gaping wound.
This is the mesh you build for yourself.
This is the sticky web transforming (once again) into rough skin
the more you imagine her dying without you there.
It’s an ugly way to heal.
