What Could Have Been

What Could Have Been (10/21/2007)
Matan Ar’ye Schwartz

His hands tracing your abs. His voice telling you little white lies that everyone wants to hear: you’re so beautiful. I love you. I’ll never leave you. You’re the only one for me. Come to bed:kiss me:hold me. Days and nights of passionate love, weekends of parties, booze and drugs.

And now you’re getting on your coat and you’re heading to the doctors as he’s saying “baby please don’t go” and you lie too “I’m just going to go to the store, no you stay in bed, I’m just going to get a paper, some milk, some eggs…you know the basics” as your hand print remains fresh on his ass…your body telling me that you’re scared, your voice shaking only slightly.

And You’re getting on your coat and he’s saying baby please don’t go:such a charming scene…when was the last time he used your name as if you were a human? When was the last time he used your name as if he respected you?

The pills you ate by the bag seem so sinister now, so foolish as you reach for the flask at your hip and take a swig like you’re trying to hide at the bottom. And you head to the clinic where nurses and doctors in lab coats draw blood and now you wait as the minutes tic by to form hours that form days that form weeks as you wait for two of them/fourteen days to pass moving around your house:work:your family, alive but not really living…you’ve already begun to think of yourself as dying.

Your phone goes off, the results for an exam you didn’t want to pass are in: with our condolences, you aced it. And people ask if you’re okay as you start to sniff and I know that you’re not, but you tell them that you’re ‘fine’ that it’s just this darn ‘allergy season…’ but you can’t fool me as you hang up your phone and shut your office door for a few moments of self reflection…I’ve been in love with you since the first day I met you and I know that you’re hurting.

Did you lay on him, let your semen stay inside of him? Did you believe him when he told you that he’d never leave you? At least that’s the one promise that he gave you that will ring true every morning when you look in the mirror, ’cause now part of him will always be a part of you as you run the race to beat the clock, to beat the game, to walk the fundraising walks that continue to fund the research that fund the new drugs to help you cheat death as this devil cheated life from you…and it didn’t have to happen, a condom didn’t break/you choose not to wear one and he chose to cheat on you.

He said he’d love you forever and now you’re standing at your front door not wanting to go in, as your hand reaches shakily for the doorknob and you open the door and walk in, he looks up at you as you tell him that you know he had been cheating: he slapped you across the face and tried to deny his act of treason: but now you get to scare this demon straight as you walk in/grabbing him by the wrists and making him listen to reason:now you as the angel of death impart the news that it wasn’t you who was the one who had been cheating and that you were drug and disease free up until the moment that you met him…and now you’re both infected.

You say that you’re going out for air, that you need some time to think, that you’ll be back later and you walk around until the moon rises and is high in the night sky, and then you walk back to your apartment…and hopeful that he’s still there, you open the door and find that your apartment is empty: he’s gone, taken his clothes and possessions with him…left his cell phone that you paid for on the counter, and a note saying that it would be best if you ‘just forgot him’ and he didn’t leave an address or a telephone number where you could reach him.

And now I’m standing in the living room with you; your arm around my shoulder, and for someone who usually towers over me at six foot five to my five foot five even, somehow you seem like you’re shorter, you’re still so beautiful, with your muscles, and your hair, and your good lucks…and ‘we pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living’, but I can’t help but mourn the loss of what could have been: a life together with you as more than my friend. I told you I would love you and treasure you and that all I wanted to do was exist inside your smile, that I thought you were funny and smart and kind…and you said in as nice a way as possible that people like you didn’t date people like me, ‘pretty people date pretty people you know how it is’ you told me…and as your arms wrap around me now, and your body shakes while crying, you hug me and I thank God that I’m not a ‘pretty person’ as I stroke your hair and breathe in your scent, not wanting to let go…afraid I won’t know when I’ll never get to hold you again as I whisper ‘we’ll get through this’ in your ear.

Two coffee mugs on the table, one on the floor in pieces.