You won’t remember going to bed. You won’t remember telling your kids to go to bed either or their sobbing when you refuse to lie with them or the sound of the hiccupped silence that follows their limb-twisted bodies into slumber. You won’t remember how many beers you had but the fridge will be empty except for the almost-rancid orange juice you suck down in a few gulps because you’ve never subscribed to the hair-of-the-dog philosophy and your sister says that may be your one saving grace.
You won’t remember cutting your hand on the shards of coffee table glass littering your hardwood floor or how the glass broke or why you chose your best work-shirt to wrap around your wound. You won’t remember the misstep, teeter, fall, the blood on the kitchen floor like beet juice, the soft shuffle of children’s feet past your room in the night. You won’t remember the open-close crunch of the back door, the click of the spare key in the lock, the horn of the taxi, loud and long. You won’t remember the splat of your vomit hitting the rug, the news anchor saying this war will never end, the moan of the man next to you, the man who won’t be there when you wake, the man who is more ghost than actual being in your memory—an apparition.
You won’t remember how many times how many men how many nights. How many days since the one who mattered left.
You will remember the way the cold floor felt on your feet when you realized you were all alone in this too-big-for-one house. The scratch of the gravel driveway on your knees when you ran outside and fell. The hushed voices of your neighbours sitting on their front stoops drinking coffee and staring. The waft of warm lilacs, of bees buzzing, the slow trickle of a heart losing its last ounce of love.