When your husband died you thought you’d never love again,
and everything that’s happened since has proven that to be true. You’ve spent your days wandering from room to
room in the house you used to live in, cashing checks from Lockheed Martin with
a heavy heart and a downturned eye. You’ll
take up smoking again, nap frequently, drink quietly alone. It’ll be a bleak way to live, marking time
and waiting for something else terrible to happen.
You’ll have been living that way for months when a package
arrives from your son. You’ll feel so
tired that you won’t be able to bring yourself to open it until today.
It’ll be brown cardboard with an index card slapped on the
front of it with mailing tape. The
return address will have the name of the forward operating base that he lives
in now on it. His writing will be clear,
concise. Neat. It’ll make you think that his life is
alright.
You’ll open it with a box cutter gently, taking care to keep
the package as whole as you can while still getting at its innards. Inside you’ll find a brief handwritten note
and a DVD with black magic-marker on the front of its case. It’ll list off a name, theoretically the name
of some soldier.
If you weren’t so hungover, it’d bring a tear to your
eye. Instead, the title of the DVD will
make you smile a little.
It’ll be a copy of Top Gun.
You’ll remember having seen it ages ago and enjoying it a
little. The note will inform you that he
thought you’d like it a lot, that it’ll
put a lot of dude energy into the house, to make up for dad being gone. You’ll pop it in the DVD player and crack
open a fresh bottle of red.
The drunk will take hold in the base of your spine, a
pleasant warm place for your mind to hide.
The film will press against the bubble, slick chests covered in oil and
long, thin forearms, a parody of male sexuality. Mustaches and dark glasses, faceless and
intimidating vague representations of sex having nonsensical conversations.
When your hands find your sex it won’t be a conscious
effort. It will come to you suddenly,
unknowingly, but the movement will feel right.
Your eyes will lose focus. The
bodies will be less like bodies, more entities, streams of matter and color and
light and as they move passing ball back and forth your fingers will move up
and down and inside and the color will become the inside of your eyelids until
until until –
The orgasm will be quiet but, at the same time, it will rock
you. You’ll let out a long exhalation,
let your lips burble. A smile will creep
across them. You’ll drift off to sleep
on the couch, sleeping fitfully, peacefully even, for the first time since your
husband’s death.
Congratulations Lonely Mom!
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