STAGE TWO
How could you leave me like this? No note, not even a forwarding address, no warning, no reason, no anguish played before the footlights. I woke up, and you were gone, leaving behind a diaspora of dreams— seashells stranded in pails— leaving me to miss and yearn for the bakery of you: the scent, the floury sweetness, the taste that I thought was renewable as the seasons or subscriptions. You stole my lust, my goddamn lust, and stuffed it in your bag as you made good your escape. You coward. You child. You infant. You nothing. But I am nothing without you. Each breath—a melee. Pain—a stampede that announces its intent at every twist and turn. Here I am, in this house where echoes do not come with Duolingo, greying, withering like the death rattle of courage, with fewer minutes, longer hours, sunlight barely detected in Stage Two on the Kübler-Ross hit parade, where all I want to do is love you and despise you and spend my days praying at the altar of you. I thought you were me and would...