woke up sick. pushed on thru the thick morning blahs, coffee at home, dropped off my boy at school and more coffee at 10:30. my tummy churns as I sit outside the office building. you call me, you ask me how Im doing. You ask me to call you when Im thru at the doctors, you wished me well. I consider for a moment, that you actually care about how Im feeling. I linger in that moment passing thoughts back and forth, painting an image of what that may look like. Bladder infection. I get them a lot. Usually when I have alot of rough sex it happens. But, in fact you had been away, in Brazil….and I had only had sex with you once upon your return. In asking if I was in a monogamous relationship, I nearly puked before answering the nurse. I lied. Of course we are, oh and I also lied saying that we dont use birth control and that if I get pregnant it wouldnt be the worst thing. We arent trying, but we are also not not trying either. But then there is the image of a Brazilian woman on her knees bent in front of you taking every inch of you into her mouth. I push it aside with all my might and grasp for something pure and good to hold onto, l read a chapter in a la leche league book. There are pictures of babies latching onto ripe, dark nipples, and I miss my baby. I miss the peace in the world when I was dropping my milk into my babies soft, new mouth. I well up with tears and imagine the pond behind the trailer, where we would swim. I would wade in deep and dark water, feet sucked down into the clay and hold you close to my naked breast. Just you and me, and the water and not a soul in sight. Oh God we were so safe from the world then. Then there was love, and I thought I had it. While there was pretty shoes, deep kisses, nights of dancing, a truck bed full of baby chickens, a garden of zinnias he grew just for me, there were secrets. You resented me, you were angry with me because I took my clothes off at night, you grew jealous of those men that filled my pockets full of money. You never respected me. You knew I struggled and you loved from afar, taking one women home at a time while you thought I wasnt watching. But the bruises, the marks on your body, the rash on your dick, to scared to ask, you’d blame it on me. I swallow it all. Make excuses for you. Here I sit a in filmy mist of peace brought on by xanax and pinot just for me. And you march on in your oblivion, and Im left behind sorting out the pieces. I cry for the itchy scars on my daddys wrists and all the bloody tee shirts I found in the garage, I cry for the bruise on my shoulder that makes me long for your touch even still. I imagine my dead grandmothers arms around me, and I want to be swaying back and forth on her porch swing, in Hillsdale NJ, 1978, where you were for mommy when she had her heart tore out, you promised her that this too shall pass.