When you left I found a collection of words hidden under the bed. They were words I had never experienced before. Letters that I knew well scrambled in strange orders. Selah. Adieu. I knew woebegone but only because of the Lake and had never imagined it lower case. I unpacked the box slowly, unwrapping each word one by one. Out came riven, bereft. Chaste. Like a child on Christmas morning, with a look of incomprehension I tore the mystery from each one but still could not understand.

I reached for the dictionary but found all the pages blank as if you had stolen every word and wrapped them up to protect them in the dark cavity between our box spring and the molding beige carpet.

I thought maybe I could copy them onto note cards so when you came back in a fury for your things you could not steal the precious syllables from me forever but apparently the ink slipped out the front door beside you when you fled and not one drop would mark up those cards. My ink couldn’t know your words—couldn’t mummify them.

Tears welled up as I unwrapped words such as putrid and burlesque and the tears dripped out from my eyes as I crawled deeper and deeper into the box. As I cried the ink blotted up into little black and blue balls on the page and the words disappeared from me as easily as they had once been written.

Sobbing, I dialed your number over and over and left messages that were only collections of gasps and muffled tear streaks. Occasionally I could breathe out simple words. Hello. Please. Need. Yes. But I couldn’t beg for your words because I could not say them. I could not know them and I could not remember them. I left you desperate messages that you could never understand but eventually I grew weary and collapsed on the bedroom floor, among blank note cards, bruised ink blots and that same dark, but now empty, place under the bed.

*

home.