And Once, He Woke Up Without Her

And, once, he woke up without her.

(For Nicole, R.I.P.)

Once, he had seen her in a dream. The dream had been so real that he could smell the woodsmoke on her skin and feel the raindrops in her hair. In the dream she had risen from their bed and started towards the door.
“But you’re going,” he called out.
“Don’t worry baby,” she had said. “It’s just going.” The door closed behind her before it had even opened. He had tried so hard to stay inside that dream. To will his eyes back to sleep, to pretend he never saw the September sunlight that cascaded down the walls of his dirty little room. But dreams are famous for their lack of consideration. And he woke up alone clutching at the hollow points in his chest.

Once, this was a few years later, he met a man who had spent his whole life working carnivals.
“I used to guess people’s birthdays and their weight,” the carny said. “I wasn’t very good at it though. People are never born when they ought to be.”
“What do you do now?” He had asked the man.
“They needed a new trapeze man. The last one quit. It takes a little time but you learn as you go.”
“What if you fall?” he asked.
“Then you learn as you go,” the man said again.


Once he finally admitted to himself that the dream was gone he stumbled out the driveway and into his car. It was nearly 10:00 am but the streets were empty. He took no notice. On the radio something was happening. Something no one could quite get their voice around. He heard fragments. A plane had been hijacked…no two planes…no ten. Buildings were falling out of the sky. Finally the disc jockey came back on. “If you can hear my voice, stop whatever you are doing, and call somebody. Now! Call a loved one, call a friend, call your wife. This is crazy. I don’t believe this is happening.” He banged the car through a red light and picked up speed. The only thing he loved now was distance. The anonymous, crazy space between everything and everything else; that was the only family he had.

Once, this was about a month ago, he fell asleep in a cat box. Addicts refer to this sort of thing as “hitting bottom” the experience that leads to “the moment of clarity.” Unfortunately, he had been far too drunk to notice. He was at a party in someone’s home and the cat box had been in the bathroom. He was looking at the box and noticing how tired he was. Then suddenly the gravel and the ammonia flavored cat shit transformed into a pillow and blanket as soft and warm as a summer fog. When he woke up he was staring eye, to eye with the box’s rightful owner.
“I hope you know some of us have to live here, “the cat said in disgust.


He couldn’t count how many nights he had woken up with a strange woman in his arms. Some he’d paid for, some he’d settled for and some he thought he’d earned. Maybe they were distractions, maybe they were replacements or more likely they were little flashes in the darkness. Someone setting off a bottle rocket in outer space. When it was over he’d lay awake, praying the soggy mattress would envelop him, drink him up until he was nothing but shadow and shame.


There had been the one named Crystal and the one named Courteney and the one named Brooke or Jessica. He always confused Stephanie with Sandra but he remembered Lisa. She had sold cars at the dealership and in the morning he had stolen her purse. Anna had thought seatbelts were erotic. Lynn wanted “an honest opinion” of her poetry. Natalie had cried afterwards but so did Shawna and Tia and Christine. Sara never cried but sometimes she’d scream out things like “why’d you have to go and die,” at the most inopportune times. Kierra had been married. And Tricia had a fantasy about being raped in a DENNY’S.


He had woken up at all times of the day. Never able to remember the tears or the punch that had put him to sleep. You’d like him but he scared you. The way he discarded the people and the jobs and the miles of road like it was all just incidental. Like everything could be replaced.

There had been the one who swore she loved him as long she could use his shower. She had come before the one he married, the first one not the second. The only one he’d liked never believed a word he said. There was the one who’d robbed a bank, and the one he left in Kansas and the one who told him that her Adam’s apple wasn’t as rare as he would think.


But today you watched him waking up and you almost started cheering. You see him opening his eyes, you watch him realize she’s not there. But before his brain can tell the body that another day got started, he’s cutting off the power, a desperate reckless plunge back into sleep. And there’s something so heroic about the way he shuts his eyes and trembles. The hands across forever reaching for what they left behind. A man running into the burning building of his dreams looking for survivors. Calling out their names, like they were ever more than echoes. And you watch him as he holds her close even though she’s nowhere near here. And even though she’s gone forever, you know he’ll never let her go.