Step On Me

I am laying on a scratchy threadbare rug. I can feel the fibers shift under me as another tear rolls down my puffy red cheeks. I think my friends bought it at a thrift store; they liked the blend of red and yellow fabric. Like a tangerine sunset. Someone opens a cabinet in the kitchen above me. White string lights dot the ceiling like so many stars, strung together with silver wire. A tall scarecrow like lamp looms over me, it’s one yellow eye piercing through me as another sob finds its way into my throat.

Through the big smudgy living room window winter takes solid shapes, snowflakes falling like broken hearts through the wind, mimicking my own aching hollow soul. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. A black cat slinks across the sunset rug, brushing past my bare legs and yawning, pink mouth opening and closing like the maw of a panther.

A warm mug of coffee is placed by my head. They know, without saying a word, what it means to me. I look down at my hands, wet with my own tears. Are these really my hands? Have I gone so far out of my own body that I no longer recognize myself? And when did that happen?

I think a movie is playing on the TV. Something faced paced with lots of colors and noise. I can barely lift my head to see it flash by me. The smell of the coffee is too tempting and I finally lift my head to sip it. It tastes like chocolate and oat milk and something sickly sweet. I drink it down. At least it feels real sliding down my throat.

I’d do anything to feel real right now.

I was so wrong about the one thing I thought I was most sure about in the entire world. The man I was going to spend my life with walked out the door without so much as a look backwards or an appreciative nod. He was just…gone. Fleeting like the winter snow piling up on the back porch, sliding off towards the ground like a mini avalanche.

A door opens and closes somewhere deep in the house. The music from the movie crescendos, the characters reaching a climax or an important turning point in their story. The cat brushes past the TV, momentarily becoming one with the characters on the screen, like a tiny mewling superhero.

Winter wind whips past the window, whiting out the world for whole minutes. Or hours. It’s hard to tell anymore. They lay a blanket over me. Something soft that smells like home and laundry detergent. It wraps me tightly like my lover used to not so long ago. Another sob chokes its way out of me and puddles on the sunset rug. How could I have been so wrong? I know better. I had always known better then to let my guard down.

The song in the movie changes. It’s something soft and sweet. Something to slow dance to. Maybe we would have danced to it, long ago. Maybe in twenty years we would have heard it somewhere and stopped to dance to it, perhaps in a grocery store, you taking me in your arms sweetly and kissing me gently, swaying next to the frozen pizzas, grateful for all the years we’d had together.

I roll over on the rug, my legs brushing against the legs of the couch behind me. The blanket shifts, exposing me to the chill of the air. A rush I was not prepared for. The cat returns, swirling around my head like a tiny black hole.

I hear water running, mimicking the ceaseless Niagara Falls falling out of my blue eyes. He used to tell me they were the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, like two deep oceans he could get lost in. How was I so wrong? I used to be his, he used to be mine. A love that is rare and hard to find. How was I so wrong?

I pedal my legs like a cricket, searching for feeling or meaning beneath this blanket.

Have you ever looked at a snowflake and wondered? Like really wondered about it? Something so beautiful and fragile, gone in an instant. Makes you appreciate it while it’s there, I guess. The snowfall outside turns into a blizzard, lashing at the window like a hungry animal, desperate to steal my warmth away. I burrow deeper under the blanket, the rug leaving angry red lines across my soft arms and stomach, burrowing into my flesh like a leech.

Something sour in my stomach twists as I remember his face. How I used to hold his chin in my hands and run my hands across the stubble that grew there. How we used to make promises about forever.

Something stares at me from behind the scarecrow lamp. The cat’s green globe eyes glow like two moons on a winter night, cutting through the gloom to reach the deepest parts of me. There used to be a poem I liked, something about fragile leaves. That’s how I felt now, like a fragile fall leaf. Something you might step on as you walked down the sidewalk, simply to hear if it crunched beneath your boot.

The movie on the TV quiets. The characters embrace, a touching moment about forgiveness. I scoff and sip my coffee, salty with tears that have fallen into my mouth. I slam it down onto the rug a bit too hard and the mug tips, edging on the precipice of oblivion before finally tipping over, porcelain meeting cotton in a fond embrace. I stare as the brown stain seeps into the red and yellow, forever changing it. Forever dyeing it. For some reason I just can’t look away from it.

A door slams and I jump, the blanket crumpling around me. The cat darts away like a creature in the night, tramping through the coffee and leaving wet paw prints as it goes. The tiny foot prints it leaves make me smile.

The movie ends, white credits rolling across a black screen. I sob, wailing like a siren.