By Alexis DuBon
The last time I saw you whole, you were laid out in a box. Like a sleeping princess in a story that ends with “happily ever after.” Waiting there for True Love’s Kiss, some kind of magic to break the spell. Hair arranged on a white satin pillow, haloing your reconstructed face, which they’d buttressed with plaster. Hands resting over a stitched-up cavern supported by bone inserts and cavity filler.
No matter how hard I wished, or how many times I kissed my true love’s lifeless lips, you never woke up. There was no more blood to get your heart beating again. I saw it all pour out of you that morning, into the passenger side of our car. I should have swerved instead of braked. I should have been quicker about it, either way.
They always said we’d have forever, we had our whole lives ahead of us. And I always knew that one day, we’d be those two old crones with white cotton candy hair in the crumbling cliffside bungalow that all the kids in town would run away from. Sometimes life gets in the way of promised futures. Some mistakes we can’t take back.
There were so many flowers. Ranunculus and anemones and poppies. Those were always your favorite—the papery-looking ones. A vibrant bouquet, all orange and yellow pinned under your overlapped hands, drawing attention from the body beneath them. All the colors of sunsets. Trails of bright blooms encircled the casket like piped frosting. Two huge arrangements flanked the end of the aisle, all shades of pink, right before that strange foot of empty space that delineated the living from the dead.
It wasn’t just me who knew how special you were, how lucky I was to be your wife. So many people were there; everyone we loved, some we barely knew. They all said how lovely you were, how tragic the loss, how we could never presume to understand the logic of the fates. Even that sweaty beast came to show his respects, gave up a day of fishing for the service. He probably just came to watch me cry. Smell the pain and despair on me. Something to laugh about with his buddies later. I could see it; gross and degrading violations passing through his head, even as your corpse lay within sight.
* * *
The next time I saw you, you were a bag of ashes.
You fluttered and flurried your way through my fingers and into the sea. One fistful at a time, the dullest grey glitter I’ve ever seen. Even as dust, you were beautiful.
When I wake each morning, I walk the stony path to the beach, dip my feet in the cold salty sea. Just like when you were here. Except now I do it alone. They told me I’d get used to you being gone, but I don’t want to. I can’t bring myself to do anything different from how we used to; I even make the bed with the pillows under the blanket the way you did. Even though they belong on top.
I want you here, your red dress trailing behind as you wade waist-deep into the water. White-capped waves breaking against you. Laughing in the sea spray. Putting the orange sky to shame with the heat of your own body.
Now everything is dark and quiet, cold.
My tears stipple the shoreline waves, and I imagine the ocean balking at this unfamiliar salt, contaminated with sadness. Nature is not an emotional thing, they say. But death is natural and there is nothing more emotional than that. At least for those of us it robs. Death is yours, and I remain. Grief paints every sunset grey now. The sky has been drained of all orange, all pink, all that candy apple red it used to get on the best summer days. The same red that surged from your body, spilling into our crumpled car. My mind fills with shards of windshield, needles of bone, tidal waves of blood.
I still have your wedding ring. It’s all they returned to me at the hospital. A small gold band in a big plastic bag. I wear it on my pinky finger, next to my own. Sometimes I pretend my fingers are perfect plastic cake toppers. Two lovers, side by side forever. The whole world, sugar beneath their feet.
* * *
Maybe nine fingers is what closure looks like.
I don’t like that I still have my cake topper bride and not you. They say finding closure is the only way to really start the process of getting used to all this absence. Something definitive, concrete. Maybe then I can work towards healing, which they keep promising me will happen.
Definitive. Concrete. Getting rid of this make-believe partner I’d somehow come to see as more than just a piece of myself. Something to kiss goodnight so I wouldn’t have to face the silence of an empty room. Something my eyes would unwittingly flash toward when a contestant made a silly puzzle-solving guess on Wheel of Fortune. It never smiles back.
A cut-rate surrogate. A crutch.
The sharp and acute puncture of your favorite paring knife. Then the burn, shrieking up my arm, shockwaves reverberating through my shoulder to a stiffening spine. I deserve it anyway, for my skin to slice apart and pool crimson. For my muscle to cleave. Crunch of bone. Soft jelly marrow seeping out from calcium armor.
The lingering ache that follows, occasional jolts of pain chasing it through my veins, swallowing the dull throb. I wish this pain would swallow my heart, eat the ache that lives there.
But mourners are never so lucky.
My blood flows without confusion. Slow and deliberate, nothing like the chaos of an impaled chest. Intention allows for containment. A pool of sanguine syrup traces the woodgrain of our kitchen table, stretching and spreading along textured oak until it drips against the floor in spattered Rorschach patterns. The smell is like sweaty pennies held too long in a child’s fist as wishes race through their head, the child trying to pick the just-right one in front of a fountain.
The waffle knit towel with all the lemons on it will have to do, even though it was a wedding gift. Everything else is in the laundry. Maybe it’s best to sacrifice this relic, too. I watch the white cotton soak red, blood spreading from my sundered knuckle, incarnadine hatch marks fringing the edge of its reach.
Holding this smallest finger of mine, this smallest sacrifice, I think of all the body you no longer have and how insignificant a pinky is. Not enough to even call symbolic probably.
I walk with it, clutched in my five-fingered hand, down our stony path to the beach in the dark of night. Facing the endless expanse of ocean, I make my wish and toss it in, wedding gold and all. Maybe it will find your ashes. Maybe we can be together that way.
* * *
The ring didn’t stay gone long. A little red octopus knew right where to bring it. Knew right where I’d be.
I’m not sure what happened to my finger, but the cephalopod is ready and waiting for me when I arrive in the morning, a golden band encircling one of its eight arms. A perfect fit. It looks right. Your ring found a new owner, it seems.
My companion is the color of a fatal wound.
I plunge my right hand into the water, and it curls an arm around my finger.
Nobody’s held me in so long. Not since the accident. There were squeezes of condolences after the official declaration and at the service. During the occasional concerned check-in. But those aren’t the same.
The octopus’s gaze fixes on my disfigured left hand, and I swear I see sadness in its eyes. Its otherworldly pupils widen and focus intently, and something like a furrow forms around those orange orbs. Maybe it knows that a person can’t regenerate appendages the way an octopus can. One arm reaches up, pulls my remaining four digits beneath the water. Though the brine sends fire through my veins, I can not reject this kindness. Not even as salt crystals pierce pulsating capillaries.
Eight limbs engulf my hand and hold it tight, comforting.
The grip feels like yours. Soft and reassuring, gentle but firm. The kind of grip that could guide me anywhere, my body unquestioningly obedient.
To be held with love and not sympathy, understanding and not pity.
Through my smudge of tears, I pretend this is your hand wrapped around mine. My sobs become something altogether inhuman. Animal noises. Feral, wild noises. Noises we don’t have words for; noises for words we don’t have. I’m so beside myself I don’t even notice when I fall asleep submerged in water, propped up on bent elbows, only my head above the surface.
When I wake, I am alone on the beach and the tide has receded. I’m cold but too overwhelmed with joy to really notice. The sky is dark. The glint of stars against the black night reminds me of new love. Or old love. Clarity in a barren void. You came back to me.
* * *
They said I’d get used to you not being here. They said your side of the bed wouldn’t feel so cold forever, told me I’d find my way to the middle, learn to fill the empty space. At last, I know why I haven’t.
I bring flowers to the water, a whole bouquet. Lilies and roses and carnations and poppies. This isn’t a test. You hate tests, and I would never do that to you. I would ask directly if I could, but you don’t have the language to answer.
That monster of a man was at the store when I bought them. Always beer and tackle in the morning, beer and Slim Jims at night. The woman at the register placating him like she doesn’t hate him too. Him eyeing her down the same way he does to me. Giving me probing looks and asking questions whose answers don’t belong to him. About my love life, about getting out more, about how long it’s been, about maybe trying something new.
He patted me on the back with those big, dry hands, all cracked from seawater and fishing line, and his worn-down fingernails thin as fish scales. Not even trying to hide his judgment, as if he has any right to look down on me. He’ll never know what we had. All he’ll ever know is fish guts and Coors Light. He took his sweet time in there too, watching me, probably wondering who the bouquet was for.
But even that much interaction was worth it. The flowers will prove what I already know.
I wait for you to come. All dressed in red and as beautiful as ever. You float through the water like a queen, still wearing your wedding ring.
One by one, I drop each stem into the sea.
A lily. You are curious, but your curiosity is passing and quickly fades.
A rose. You glide an arm over the petals, know to avoid the thorns.
A carnation. You dance around the blossom, but don’t linger.
A poppy. You coil around the thin green stem, pose against the crepe-like petals. Your pigments shift and your body goes the color of over-kissed lips, your mantle midnight black. You shimmer a rich pink poppy palette.
This one, the best of the bunch. These have always been your favorite, of course I remember.
I drop the rest of the bouquet in, just to make sure. You gather each poppy stem, twisting an arm around and around the way you used to wrap your hair around the curling iron when we got dressed up. Then you return to your stunning scarlet shade, nosegay of poppies gathered in your grip. You’ve said what you had to say, spoken in color.
One arm carries the five stems and the other seven entwine my foot. Your head rests against my ankle and I run my fingers over your slick skin, stroking smoothness the way I once stroked auburn curls, sitting on the couch, watching Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy with fuzzy socks and ice cream.
The day passes and the flowers come apart in the waves, petals floating on the tide, out to sea. By nightfall, you are left clutching bare, green skeletons. They’ve lost all their pink, all their red. Just ribs now, with no meat to pad them.
When the sky goes completely black, you leave for the safety of whatever cave is your home. We are both alive, we both need our rest, and I know our bed no longer suits you. It’s a small compromise, now that tomorrows exist again.
* * *
I wake up extra early the next morning, too excited to sleep, so excited to see you again. You, however, arrive late. Still holding those five bare stems, still wearing your wedding ring around one arm. A person wouldn’t find your ring so heavy, but the gold weighs you down a bit now. Your bony bouquet must slow you down, too, leaving only seven arms to swim with.
I don’t mean to be impatient, but I brought something from home and I just can’t wait to give it to you. A treasure.
The lace has yellowed a bit, stored in the back of the closet in tissue paper and plastic. And it still smells like you did that day. Like buttercream and champagne. Like how your kisses tasted, wedding cake and sparkles. You recognize the veil and reach up above the water, stretching to grasp it. It’s too big for your head now, but I came prepared with ribbon and a needle to fasten it into a dress. A second wedding.
Seafoam bubbles gather as if burst from a freshly popped bottle. The surf celebrates with us.
You are a vision. I remember our vows from when we first recited them and nothing has changed since then. I still mean every word. We will never leave each other, never live severed lives. ‘Til death do us part, and so we remain together.
Gown drenched in seawater, you twirl and the lace lifts around you, creating a whirlpool with you at its center.
I lie submerged like before, only my head above the surf, and you position yourself on my chest. Over my heart, where you’ve always belonged.
Arms unspooled and spread, you look so much like your wound, like that day. Like those too-vital arteries. Outside of you where they didn’t belong. Your head now bulging Valentine red over my skin like the organs that wouldn’t stay inside your rib cage. No matter how hard I struggled to push them back behind bone. Slippery like that, too.
Your lace clings wet against the red of you, the way your shirt did then. But it stays white. It seeps no color from you now.
I cry new tears into the sea and don’t doubt for a second that they are well-received. These are tears of love and joy. Tears of gratitude. We are together again, my bride and me.
Once more, you leave with the last light. It matters that you are safe, and you retreat to the shelter of a cave where I wish I could follow.
* * *
The next day it takes you even longer to come, and I worry you might have gotten caught on something. Maybe your dress snagged on a rock or a shell or heaven forbid a claw. But soon you appear. Slow and steady floatsteps as if down the aisle again. I remember how it felt waiting for you at the altar then. Just as it does now.
We watch morning stretch into noon as waves roll over us. The marmalade sunset sinks to a lavender-washed sky. Things are just as they should be. At least until the lavender heavies, weighed down and darkened with night. But it’s not there yet.
I never want the night to come. But of course it does.
* * *
It’s always too dark to see anything when the time comes for goodbyes. I never get to watch you swim away, watch your dress glide behind you as you disappear off into the depths. White lace in a sea of black, an angel in a midnight sky.
If I had known how many days would pass until the next time, I might have packed you in a jar and brought you home. Kept you in the tub and filled it with seawater.
Planning for the future has never been my strong suit. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.
I know it was my fault.
If we’d left in the morning like you wanted, we wouldn’t have had to drive through the night. If we hadn’t driven through the night, I wouldn’t have been so tired when dawn brought that deer out on the road.
And then it was too late to apologize.
I couldn’t tell your blood from the deer’s. It was all everywhere. It was the only thing there was. A sea of blood drowning our totaled Toyota. That sweaty penny smell choking the air, all those wishes it was too late to make.
But death wasn’t the end for us. You came back. You came back and we were together like we are supposed to be and now you’re gone again.
Three days and no sight of you.
Tomorrow I’ll bring more flowers. A dozen poppies. Maybe those will do the trick. You could never pass up poppies.
* * *
Another run-in at the store. That ogre. Watching me select all the best ones from the bucket. It’s late in the season for poppies, and he’s probably wondering why I’m bothering sorting through wilted flowers. He’s always trying to figure me out. But you deserve the most perfect poppies, and if I spend enough time rummaging through them, he’ll be out the door by the time I go to pay.
As he’s handing the cashier his money, his buddy comes in, and now they’re talking about fish. About grouper and tuna and marlins. About how big they were and how hard they fought. But the kicker, that monster of a man says, is what he found when he cut this one Mako open.
A shiny gold ring. A wedding band.
I push past them to pay for the flowers and leave faster than I can catch my breath. He shoots me a look like who do you think you are, but I have more important things to worry about.
It couldn’t be yours.
There are hundreds of wedding rings in the ocean, hundreds of wives who had enough and made grand, dramatic gestures of letting go. It’s one of those. It isn’t yours.
* * *
One by one, I drop the poppies into the water. One by one they drift away with the tide. Perfect and intact. Dragged off before they get a chance to slough their soft parts and turn to skeletons in your fist. Away from me, to the deeper sea where nature lives without emotion.
You never come to claim them. No lace ever washes ashore.
You’re gone again. I’m alone again. I feel your absence everywhere, all over again.
It’s nothing I’ll ever get used to.
* * *
Alexis DuBon is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. She is the author of Nineteen Little Stab Wounds (an occasionally reemerging chapbook) and co-editor of No Trouble at All (Cursed Morsels Press, 2023). You can find her writing in magazines and anthologies as well, but you won’t find Alexis herself unless she wants you to and she almost certainly doesn’t.