26

THERE ARE OTHER THINGS I remember from the last time we saw each other. I remember looking deep into his eyes and feeling guilty, feeling a throb in my stomach, the certainty that I would continue saying goodbye to my whole life, one loss after another, and a body that tolerates everything. I remember thinking about this, and then, following that thought or next to him, with his long pinky nail, I remember touching the cut splitting my lip and sticking my nail into it until it bled and then sucking up the blood knowing I had to go. Nothing would free me from the guilt or the pain. I remember giving him an album and a pair of pants that were his. Luckily there wasn’t more. There weren’t books. There was nothing to split up. The baby was coming with me. I remember he asked, one last time, why I was ending it, and I no longer knew what to tell him, but I mumbled something about his lifestyle. I immediately realized my stupidity and his pain and grabbed my wallet and looked at him standing in the door and, behind him, the gleaming cave that looked like a house for the first time. I noticed he’d organized and cleaned everything and that it didn’t smell like cat pee but cinnamon, and I looked in his eyes and it was like seeing a threat and it was like seeing that weakness that in certain beings incomprehensibly precedes and prepares their strength and I said to myself this is what you must do, fucking hell, it’s what must be done. And then, again dramatically, I leapt on him, hugging him and sobbing, and he also cried, and when I felt him starting to caress my hip, I gathered all my impulse located right there, in those pelvic bones, and, without saying anything, left. I remember that when I got home, I walked straight to the closet to look at my skates, in search of something to assuage the terror. And I took a lap around the house thinking about that night we left together, about the density of the atmosphere proclaiming things would change forever. And about how I always made the most important decisions so erratically. It got dark outside while I was spinning. I watched the darkness come and fall softly over the things in my house. Over me. Always that hour of the day when I had to resist.