TOUCHING WHAT’S THERE

The house is haunted by us, remnants left over from two weeks ago. You left your beer and your cigarettes, we left the books we’d read from to each other on the coffee table, Clarice Lispector and Weldon Kees, and gas station rosé in the fridge, dents in the pillows and the couch cushions, my sex glistening sticky on the wall.

Sometimes you need to take the time to recover from knowing someone.

I don’t look in the mirror when I wake up in the early morning hours of the night.

You are the worm in the apple I swallowed searching for an exit.

I am the girl who dies first in the horror movie; without much character development it comes as a surprise to you that I, too, am nuanced and not just vulnerable.

You are concrete in summer blistering my feet.

Sometimes you need to recover from someone.

I used to consider myself the cherry pit, but now I know I am the stem, tied up by your tongue.

You are the porch swing, my head on your shoulder my legs stretched across your lap whiskey on your breath and why am I always crying—

—once I had a flower press. I also had a husband.

You carry tragedy after tragedy after tragedy after ache.

I let you come into my room, let you undress, let you get into my bed, let you watch as I take off my shirt, let you feel my skin on yours as I lean across you to turn off the light.

Sometimes you need to recover.

She, who at least once in her life wanted to be able to say “forever.”

I wait for your lips, we both know what is coming.

You try, again, to choke me.

You laugh. You groan. You whisper in my ear that I am good, so good, I am everything.

I surrender.

The house is haunted by us and suddenly there are spiders. They crawl up the corners of the wall where I haven’t dusted in months, I shake out my shoes for them, shake out clothes tucked away in drawers, shake out the sheets. The spiders are recluses and I, too, am alone when I see them, sticking to the edges. Damage can’t be undone only repaired—a bite can send venom into the bloodstream; a bite the way I like it can bruise.

Sometimes you need to take time.

I am the early morning but I stay up all night for you anyway.

You, late at night, still showing up late.

I start rearranging my impulses—I want to be brighter.

You stop being gentle. You don’t want me.

In absence nothing between us grows fonder, only more battered, only colder, only more abundantly an unsalvageable wreck, and I hear a chorus of women telling me I can stop hurting, be myself again, dazzling: Lady Lazarus rising from the ashes, Undine rising from the water—a body beginning again rather than succumbing, a mythology blossoming rather than an easy kill.

While you were talking to yourself in the dark again I was already deciding.

She gave him her entirely empty thought inside of which was all of her.

Sometimes you need to take.

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Heather Bartel is the author of the essay collection Exit the Body (Split/Lip Press, 2024). Her writing has appeared recently in FENCE, Birdcoat Quarterly, Leavings, Grimoire, and Heavy Feather Review. She is founder and co-editor of the literary journal and community The Champagne Room. Heather lives, writes, and dances in Columbia, Missouri.

Notes:

The following lines are borrowed from Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark: 

She, who at least once in her life wanted to be able to say “forever.” 
She gave him her entirely empty thought inside of which was all of her.

The following line is borrowed from a friend: 
Sometimes you need to take the time to recover from knowing someone.