The Ghost of Art

I read one of his journals today.
I read it because
I sold
our bed,
in three hours.

I had to empty out his bedside table (they went too) before the guy came to pick it up.

Later, as I try to decide where
a mattress
on a floor would look best,
in MY room,
I get side tracked
and sift through
the box of stuff from the bedside tables. I sit down, pick up a journal and read.

It starts in June 1995, 6 months after we had been married.

I recognize his early fear of not being strong enough for us. I recognize my young self, but from his eyes. It is a refreshing and slightly embarrassing view. I am soften. I want to reach in and back and hug him and tell him it will all be ok.

The journal gives me a memory of things I had forgotten. He records our bike trips, the time he got fired from his job as a basketball coach. He records his fear and excitement about my pregnancy…and his amazement at how I just want to eat all the time. He records our trip to Paris and every single place we visit. He records his disappointment at work and his deep disappointment for his parent’s reactions. He records his love for me.

He records the good advice I gave him, calling it “another good thing Kim said..”

When I open his journal
I did not expect to see him,
Rising, like a ghost.
But he is no longer clear.
He is like mist.
I can see him if I stand still or far enough away from this life.
But up close, he looses his definition.

Reading that journal brought him back to me but not in a full form.

My life is past him, and here in this life 702 days away from loss,
I can only see traces of him.

It’s strange because I see
the idea of him, of Art,
doesn’t fit in this new place,
in this bedroom with no bed.

I could not be who I have become if he were here.

It’s almost like another death. A quieter
More gentle death
As I move forward, I leave him behind
In the mist
As a ghost.

Tonight
I will lie on the mattress,
on the floor and cry,
for him, for me
for how I am leaving him,
and for all the good things I have
become since he has gone.

That is what needs to happen
So I can find a new bed.

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