Aspersion: A Story About A Hollowed Out Pomegranate

I love the word gloaming. I love it just as much as I hate the gloaming of the day for reminding me of you. I keep the receipt from that day, the one before the last, in my pocket as proof. And the photos, the ones I swore I’d slice up into dust, I keep them, too, taped to the underneath of my desk next to your number written in permanent black marker. I call this safe keeping; I call this something I won’t remember in the morning. I label the air from this moment and that, and shove it into corners too small for an escape, in crevices that will not return the favor… the whole time stripping my pride from major organs that I blame for all of this in the first place.

It’s the gloaming of the day; the way it wraps in and out of a city street, in a dull shade of pink that seems too purposely created for someone to have not written this scenario a hundred times before, that makes me double over and catch myself choking on words I should have long ago learned to keep to myself. The sun does this thing, where it sets in slow motion, settling itself neatly on the west end of every street in this city, and I hate this, too. I dread this hour of everyday; somewhere in Brooklyn, somewhere downtown, a broken frame, a forgotten bar tab, a chin that wobbled too often in a vain attempt at ceasing the next step in the breakdown. And they tell me, the ones who know better, that I need this to breathe, I need this self-prescribed chaos in order to function; I need it to fill up my stomach, push it out my veins and pass through my limbs in order to feel alive. It’s all part of the process of dying and living, or dying again.

The gloaming, the fucking gloaming, is the indication of the darkness to come; the darkness that I used to look forward to when I once knew you. I welcomed the darkness then, and like a child who refused to share, I grabbed it and hid it under pillows, in parks without parameters, rules or tomorrow. It never stays put; like you, it never stays in one place too long. Next to me, your arm touching mine, and you’re gone; and I feel like a hollowed out pomegranate that never had a chance because how we’ve been built from the inside out. I spend so much time picking up the pieces, pulling at my skin that refuses to stay clean, stay free of blemishes, and ages too rapidly and it all leads to disgust I can’t undo. And I’m forced to relive my indiscretions at the lashings of your palate that needs a new way of speaking to me if you want me to understand you.

The gloaming is outside my window, and it’s taunting me with the way it refuses to just stop. And I don’t need the sun to rise, if it means having to watch it set, and I probably don’t need these photographs, if I really do the math, but I don’t do math. I weigh the pros and the cons and I go about this beautiful thing called denial, and before I know it, my head’s in the toilet again. And I’m chastising myself for being honest, being exactly me, and I’m catching my reflection in the silver handle of the flush: I am gorgeously warped. I lean in for a better look, and I don’t recognize myself and in that moment, I stop being sick. I straighten my back and breathe, like they tell me to do, although I’ve lost track of who they are or even were meant to be in this life I created, in this storybook without a storybook ending, where I was a princess and someone was supposed to come in to save me. It’s hard to be saved if you leave the door to the castle unlocked.

From the floor where I’m still not my own, the gloaming is there just out of view and I feel the cold of the tile against my shoulder blades, and I think of how my hand looks against the center of your back before I pull away and into myself again. And it’s in thinking of you that I recognize myself, although my reflection still remains scrambled and foreign, and I reach for my stomach – there will be more sickness.

In the Lower East Side, I sometimes see you although I know you’re someplace else, and behind you, like an ominous truth without an ending, I see that gloaming, illuminating as if joking, as if mocking, as if you were actually as heavenly as I would have portrayed you in the movie version. And I hate myself for seeing you, and I want to destroy the part of my brain where you’re swaddled in a protective blanket, I want to flirt with trepanation and come out the other side with you removed.

I remember June, against my will. I recall my birthday and mood of the room, although I’ve tried to stop. I have October in my wallet, and the Christmas before last, I’ve edited it to my liking and I’ve placed it between wax paper and stuck it in the pages of a book I’ll never read again. But the frame is still broken and there’s still blood on the floor, and sometimes there isn’t enough soap for imperfect skin or laminated hardwood.

My head toward the window, it’s the gloaming without you. I’m not sure where you’ve gone, or where I found you in the first place, or if you were something I made up to teach me a lesson I should have learned three or four lifetimes ago. Only one half of me is dying today, and the other half, the one that tried to make a point, is, if we were to be honest, on the mend because it stopped understanding language that was meant to murder and always did.

It was somewhere in Brooklyn, it was somewhere downtown, it was in the back of a cab, it was at the hand of someone who writes this shit for dime store displays, paperback novels that no one will ever read. And I’m up against the wall, and I’m pressed to my limit and every light bulb in the joint has blown, and I’m stuck reaching out into something I created but can’t see. I drop to the ground and I’m throwing up again, but this time it’s not you, it’s these pieces of me I can’t recognize and I wonder if this is how I look when I’m without you: dull and lifeless.

Someone bring me some water, someone supply the last line, someone close the window and pull the shade until it falls from above and forces me to accept the gloaming of the day. And my hand’s on my stomach again and I know what I am, I know I am not lifeless and dull; no, instead I am that hollowed out pomegranate, the one you left on the table, on a plate between us as if I were supposed to find meaning in the sentiment. However, you’re just words shot into the sky, an archery lesson gone awry and while I’ll be sick until the bitter end about it, I will remain staring straight ahead – my eyes will tear and I’ll blame it on wind or onions I don’t have, and the sky will shift in its appearance, and the blame of this equation will be removed, but only because I couldn’t remove you. It was my fault for leaving the door to the castle unlocked; it was my fault for not using the receipt to return that soap for a better one, a stronger one that would be more relentless in its efforts to clean.