So Long Lives This and This Gives Life to Thee
Laura Hower
She left her false teeth in the courthouse
after signing the divorce papers. She didn’t mind. She could smoke like a chimney when they were out. Eight Saturdays ago she told you there was a sale on aluminum at the junkyard and you couldn’t say no to that chandelier of a smile when she said get in the car loser we’re going shopping. The elastic forest she called an apartment was furnished with an oven, an iPad, a couch and a bowl. You offered to take her to the store and buy her eating utensils but she shrugged always, saying it was her duty to live in semi-bohemian poverty. She once bumped your typewriter with her hip, saying you should have become a lawyer or an aerial ballet instructor, anything but a writer. She crossed out every noun on the page with a needle and set you to the task of making pure word manure. A pint of cough medicine sloshed into her user interface and massaged the toffee in her stomach until you found her decaying in the bathtub. You told her family you were an old tennis buddy and placed under her stiff fingers the brooch she had given you as a token of appreciation. You punched her ex-husband when he called her a sow at the dinner afterwards. She willed you everything but the bowl, that went to her old college buddies. You burned all her bras behind the doughnut shop as she had asked and sprinkled her ashes into an encyclopedia now you have nothing to do but sit in your apartment, without tears, drinking orange juice, hugging her favorite wedding gown and waiting for the aluminum forks in the microwave to spark. |