Letter Written to Metal Ox While in Hospital With Scorpio Two

Dear Sir,

It’s sad, going through all this without you. At times I wish I could pick up the phone and tell you all about it, the image of my little girl here in this cold white room, the IV in her arm, the pale skin of her, my weepy heart. There is so much that can be done. Maybe you could go get me a tooth brush (three days without one). Or something to eat. Or hold my hand. Maybe you could tell a joke to cheer her and me up a little. Maybe you could check on my other offspring, at home and still recovering from surgery.

Then I remember, you wouldn’t do any of that. You wouldn’t be here, anyway. You wouldn’t drive out of your way to help any of us. If we were together, you would never stoop to coming to my side in such an instance as this. I know. It’s been tested. You didn’t.

OK, once you did. With the breast scare, you were very good, though you made it clear that it would be inconvenient to miss the wrestling match should I need to go to the emergency room. But at least you tried, and I am grateful.

But then, well, next was my dad’s memorial, at which you’d said you’d support me -- then you backed out. So, one time there? Compared to the many times not? Reliable? No. Evidence of learning? Not.

And so then I’m glad, because here, in these hospital rooms, in that apartment back home where the work and stress of two hospitalized children in a month is all overcoming me, there is no vacuum in the shape of you, no empty space where you should be. If we were still together, that Phantom You whom I lived with for five years, He Who Appeared By Disappearing in Every Crisis, would be right over there in the chair, next to my darling girl’s sick bed; He’d be visible only to me, a place with the air sucked out of it, the molecules revolving backward, dark matter shooting from His outline like wooden darts shaved to a needle's stick, the very vibe of Him smirking at me, saying: “See how little regard I have for you? I could give a damn how you feel. You will never count as high as all the other things in my life. Those are so much more attractive than you. Sucker. Idiot. It’s not my fault if you can’t read the writing on the wall.”

And so I sit here, alone, peacefully. No empty form, no screeching voice, no sucker punch. Just the knowing that without someone invisible to need, my heart is safe and clean.

Yours,
M