STARTLE

I don’t know why people call it a cold sweat. When I wake up with my sleep shirt plastered to my upper back, I’m steaming hot. Damn estradiol patch must’ve expired. When did I change it last?

ORIENT

Rolling over toward her side of the bed to find it empty is not what plucked me out of my nightmare tangle.

It’s an oldie, but baddie.

Chewing gum sticks to the inside of my mouth, my tongue, my teeth and I pull and pull but it won’t detach from my self or if I do get some out, there’s always more clinging to that thing that hangs like a quivering fleshy stalagmite in the back of my throat stretching it to breaking point.

She would know its proper name.

ASSESS

Peering at the crack under our bedroom door, I can see no light. So she’s not up til all hours hunting on her work computer for gently discounted exorbitantly expensive European cycling apparel. Or a new seat for her foldable bike that doesn’t inflict saddle sores after long rides. Maybe she’s sitting on the toilet in the dark, scrolling for another helmet on her phone. She already has three squirreled away in our overpacked, regurgitating closets.

But her phone is on my nightstand. It’s been there since Saturday.

FIGHT / FLIGHT

No no no no no no no no no no no…

FREEZE

My arms and legs are leaden taffy, able to be tugged and pulled by anyone other than me. They’re affixed to my torso with the sticky string that comes in aerosol cans for kids. I’m a cotton candy mummy wrapped up in her beloved Japanese cherry blossom sheets. She bitched whenever I ate sweets in bed, though she always brought them home for me anyway. Dimpled when my eyes lit up. Accused me of making a mess and forgave me after at least three chocolate-infused kisses.

Irrevocably trapped in my hippocampus where we walk, talk, swim, dance to the David Bowies of our childhoods at top volume until the cranky lady upstairs starts pounding on our ceiling with her witchy broomstick.

DISCHARGE / COMPLETE

When the alarm on her phone vibrates with that mild cuckoo call, my eyes ache for reasons too many to enumerate. At least they’re open. I see the bright purple dress hanging from the back of her painted antique chair. Her favorite color. Why the fuck did I agree to wear that?

She’s eternally blind, but I’ll be fighting her forever and we’ll never get to make up, like a corkscrew drilling its way into my guts that never reaches the core. The worst of all worlds.

This will never end.

It hasn’t even begun.