The Disappearing Heart Technique

My boyfriend’s been dead for two months. Perhaps the hardest part of it all is the fact that he left so much behind for me to deal with, yet took nothing of me with him. Love notes, clothes, the vision of him in my bed. Sharing a bath towel because we loved having each others’ smells on us. I was blindly, foolishly, and debilitatingly in love with him, and now I have no idea what the fuck to do with myself.

It hurts too much to think about the happy memories, because I know they’re never going to happen again. I try to focus on the struggles, the arguments, with the hope it will make moving on easier. Even when I force myself to consider all of his flaws, I think about how much I loved those, too, and how I wish I’d expressed that to him better while he was around.

I hate that I’m haunted by him, but he cannot be haunted by me. I find myself wondering how this happened, or rather, did it happen at all? How is it that we were together, here, kissing, laughing, talking, only two months ago, and now we’re not? Did I dream it? Was he ever really here? Have I simply woken up?

I made him a mixtape for his birthday. I had no idea what to get him. I made him a card to go along with it that said:

“Happy birthday, Peter -

I made you a mixtape.

I don’t always know what to say to you, but I know how you make me feel, which is so many things. I hope when you listen to it, you’ll feel all the things I feel, too.

Love,
Tamara”

He wasn’t a romantic person. His gestures of affection were quiet and simple, yet they were observant of my needs. When he read the card, he didn’t say anything. He had a small smile on his face, and he walked over to me and held me. I loved him so deeply in that moment. I’ve had trouble remembering what he smelled like. I think maybe it was something sweet… with that hint of saltiness that comes from all burly, heavy-lifting men.

A few weeks after his birthday, I took the ferry to ________ _________ to see him. When I walked into his house, the birthday card I’d written him and the mix tape were sitting in the same place they were the last time I’d been there. “Did you get to listen to the mix tape yet?” He said no. That was the last time I went to his house. I rarely ever took the ferry before we started dating. In retrospect, I think the only time I ever rode it was for when I was going to see him. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to ride on one of those again without instinctively feeling like I would eventually be arriving at his house.

When I think about the last time I saw him, at my apartment, I think of all the things I would have said and done differently had I known it would have been the last time I was going to see him. We argued that night, although the reason for the argument has disappeared from my memory. I think it was just tension that had built up over time, finally combusting from something as stupid as not being able to agree on what movie to watch. It’s hard to make peace with the fact that this was our last moment together.

I’ve felt so heavy in my heart since then and have let it weigh me down. I’m tired of my eyes being swollen from crying all the time. I really thought it would be easier for me to move on from this if I convinced myself he was dead, but all it does is romanticize a remarkably unromantic relationship.

As for the “love notes”, it was just one little post-it that said “I LOVE TAMARA” because I asked him to demonstrate his handwriting, and he asked me what he should write. No clothes either, except a shirt he outgrew and had completely forgotten he’d given to me. Such small things that meant everything to me, while the birthday card I wrote him was probably tossed in the trash long ago.

I thought his gestures of affection were quiet and simple, and observant of my needs, but I never understood why he would squirm anytime I touched him. He usually humored me, but always made it a point to tell me how obligated he felt having to simply hold my hand in public. He never listened to the mix tape I made him either. It was a quiet enough gift to feel so incredibly sentimental to me at the time, but simple enough to convince myself now that it was just a piece of shit gift.

In a way it does feel like he died. It doesn’t seem like the person I was in love with exists anymore, but perhaps he never existed at all. The last time he contacted me, he told me he missed me and thought about me, but needed to think things over. Four days later, a seemingly disconnected phone line and a social media profile that has apparently vanished. There was never a goodbye or an explanation; he truly ceased being in my life. I find myself shaking my head during the day, in a way that says “Damn, how did I let this happen?” I’m fascinated by the prospect of caring for someone so little that you can actually make yourselves completely disappear from one another.

It still hurts, obviously, but less because I miss him, and more because I’m disappointed in my judge of character. I willfully opened the gates and welcomed harm. I’m beginning to learn the benefits of bitterness while suffering the repercussions: Skin thickening, heart hardening.

I never liked riding that fucking ferry anyway.

Written by: Rebecca Lee

Photograph by: Marshall Blevins

The Guest

He’s an unofficial sort of guest; a guest because the only guest on the list is him. He’s alone, separated from the bounding noise vibrating on the highway; separated from the people who apparently wouldn’t understand. We call him Uncle J. Well, he calls himself that. He’s been here awhile. Five months, actually, though he says he used to live here; in childhood. “I was glad to see my old place; the room’s the same, but the clothes have changed thank God!” We laugh as if we’re in on the joke. He changes the subject, his gloved hands motioning calmly as his mint leaf breath wafts towards our chilled nostrils. His breath was always minty. Toothpaste? Gum? “My father was pretty famous…” his eyes search a thick fog for the word he needs. “He taught me how to do it. Everything.” Do what? Who knows. He continues, and a slight smile cracks his fragile lips. “The money, well, the money is good. Whoa good.” He sizes the air with his hands and smiles again, and this time we can see the sense of humor buried in his mixed-up thoughts, like a shining piece of silver in a pile of ashes.

We try to hand him money; he refuses, like always, making mention of the “whoa good” money once again. We smile, letting the whispers of the passersby on the well-traveled trail seep through the halfway woods, sliding across the door of his tent. Uncle J doesn’t care.

“My father was pretty famous,” he says again, “and because of that the famous people knew me.” That part’s true, we find out later. Uncle J isn’t totally unaware. What does he really know? “So, when I talked to the famous people I could tell them how to do it, because he taught me how to do it.” What is it? We laugh again, working to decipher his twisted truth. “I was the only doctor in Hawaii, er, California, and that’s a lot of people.” The doctor part is true, too, apparently. Though that was before he forgot who he was. Or before they forgot who he was. His face softens, his bright eyes conveying either sadness or nostalgia, though over what is not clear. Nothing is with him, but that’s why we talk. He knows something. Maybe not everything, but something.

“I knew when I met you yesterday - that you were right on.” The same smile creeps across his wrinkled face. “I knew, because you just know.” I get the eerie feeling he does, and even if we don’t, we smile too. He breathes a sigh of relief or congestion, and moves on; quickly, like always, though with the impression of having stayed with the exact same thought as before.

That’s when the cops come.

They show their shiny badges as per the usual and ask Uncle J if he’s aware the property is “restricted.”

He nods, asking them if they know how long his father lived there and whether or not they know who he is, all the while keeping his hands to himself and his breath minty fresh. He offers them a piece of gum. Gum. How? Uncle J keeps talking. “It really is great to be back here.” He carries on; he thinks they’re visitors. Just like we are. Like everyone is. They show their shiny badges again and repeat the “restricted area” comment. Uncle J laughs. Not out of scorn. Over something he’s said. He chuckles, sizing the air with his hands “I knew. I knew when I met you guys the other day that you were right on. I knew you’d show.” His eyes are hopeful, staring at something invisible behind the cops as his cracked lips bleed all for the sake of his widening smile. The cops make another pretend effort at their misunderstood jargon, using words like “sir” and mumbling something about property rights. Uncle J dismisses them again.

“I thought I had seen the worst of this place – that was when my father was pretty famous. He was. And I knew the people he knew. They’d say ‘J!’ if they saw me. But that was before. He passed, bless his soul, but I kept in touch with the people. A lot of pe-“

They take out their handcuffs. The game is up. Uncle J’s smile fades, a confused fog seeps over his face. The uniformed homewreckers repeat their words with newfound authority and reach to take his arms. We try to intervene, claiming Uncle J is our relative, our friend; anything to keep this from happening again. They decline less than politely, pulling Uncle J’s arms away from his lower back. He apologizes as tears form in his eyes, coating them in a crystal layer of clarity.

He knows. He knows he’s not home. He knows he’s not supposed to be here. He knows we only pretended to understand. A tear slides down his wrinkled cheek as his serene brown eyes clamor for the truth of his circumstance.

And then he smiles.

He chuckles, revitalized by his fall back into his hazy reality. “Take a picture. Please. Take a picture. I need to show them that I found where my father was. He was pretty famous. He was.” I nod, noting Uncle J’s still minty breath and the sudden change in his eyes. He’s staring past his nylon home into the thin woods as if looking for something. Something he’d lost, or found. Who knows.

The cops shuffle him away. We stand, incredulous. I reach for my phone, snapping a picture just before he yells:

“I knew you were right on. I knew you were.”


Written by: Tyler Wilborn
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll

Uncle Pug

When walking, Uncle Pug’s crutches went huff-plat, huff-plat, telling us he was coming. Two loud crutches made up for one dead leg. Tee cut and stapled all his pants at the right knee so his stub didn’t get cold, except in the summertime, when it stuck out the bottom of his shorts like a turtle head.

“What good?” he said, screen door sizzling shut.

“Ain’t nothing,” Tee answered from the kitchen. I didn’t say anything. I stayed out of grown-folks business.

I got off the couch so he could sit. Tee said he hollered when I didn’t get up from the couch because the crutches hurt his armpits like feet walked too long. But Pug fussed like an old lady, that’s just what he did. Whooped like one too -- stung, didn’t really hurt hurt, except when that crutch whapped your forehead.

Like I knew he would, he flipped the TV channels and stopped on the Golden Girls. He only walked up the path to our house to watch TV and eat. Otherwise he stayed in his house out back. But he’d walk that path every day to catch his woman. He loved him some Blanche.

“Ach,” he sucked his teeth. “Get it,” he said when she sashayed.

“Dorothy, sit yo ugly ass down,” he said when Dorothy came on the screen, dismissing her with a flinging of his wrist.

“Mind me of Sophia,” and then he’d say, “not that old Sophia. My Sophia.” And then he’d wait for the air to breathe the questions he teased up. By thirteen, I didn’t care any more. I’d played hide and go get it, let a white girl touch my thing, felt Keisha Frye’s titties at the movie theatre. What’d I care about some old wrinkly broads on the television and a man with no leg? He never talked about the nasty stuff anyway. Bet he never seen a coochie up close. But Raynard dumb tail goaded him every time, making me miss all the jokes.

“Who Sophia? Some white girl?” Raynard, Tee’s man, sipped wide from a Steel Reserve, eyes leaky red.

“Oh, can’t say.” Pug teased, waiting for someone to beg.

And Raynard gave Pug what he wanted. “Aw man, you don’t said something now.”

I sat on the floor leaning against the couch. Pug’s full leg stretched out no further than my thigh. He had the family look -- Tee called him “petite,” raisin-brown with cool Indian hair cut low, but long enough so you can tell it curled up. Pug was old and lived in a shack, but he never left the house without a crisp ironed shirt, one shined shoe, and his hair slicked back.

“Sophia’s legs -- creamy white like drumsticks covered in buttermilk, long and lean, my boy.” Pug smacked his thigh.

“What you say!”

“Don’t get him riled up, Raynard! I ain’t trying to take his old ass to the hospital cause he done caught wood up in here.” Tee yelled laughing.

“Aw Girl, hush up now. Let me tell this boy how a real man does it,” Pug said.

It was the episode where Blanche goes on the date with her gym instructor, a much younger man.

“Sophia was in France. French women love black men.”

Blanche sat at the dinner table, trying hard to connect to the hot young thing across from her.

“Saw me in my uni-form. Can’t no woman resist a Mitchie man in uni-form.”

Blanche laughed, desperate.

“Well, how you get with her Pug? Back then and all? She was white right?” Raynard asked, disbelieving the tall tale.

“This was France, young man. I was a soldier, young man. That’s the only excuse I need. But we hung out in secret clubs. Won’t nobody in there to bother us cause they were all doing the same thing.” Pug’s back straightened, taking a plate from Tee.

Blanche’s young man said she reminds him of his mama, and dignity flees her face. Pug dribbled green collard juice down his crisp plaid collar.

“She was a queen.” He stared at his hands, “We went together. Then I lost my leg. Then I came home,” he said.

“Well damn? Some French white woman…” Raynard looked like he wanted to say more, but Tee shook her head. Let it go.

Blanche rose from the table, purse in hand, chest high, head high, and marched back home to her girls. She wasn’t lonely, never lonely, she had her friends. Thank you for being a friend, she said.

Uncle Pug just had us. No kids, never married, no women except the ones on TV.

One time I went in Pug’s house. His piss-and-shit pot, one of them portable stands from the hospital with a white bucket underneath, had not been changed and Tee told me go down there and put it outside the house. Said when she walked by, she couldn’t breathe right from holding her breath, didn’t want the ghost of that smell getting in her. She made me put on a doctor’s mask because she didn’t want the ghost in me neither. I went in his house while he sat on our couch, watching his Blanche. I held the cold handles out, trying not to look down into the swishing brown mess, praying I didn’t trip on a pulled up sticker-board tile Raynard help put down when the plywood rotted. Made sure all four corners of that stand set solid in the grass behind the shack before footing out there fast. Ripped off my mask once up the path and breathed, breathed, breathed.

That was the stench he took in every day when he left our couch and huff-plat, huff-plat back home in the darkness. Sugar took his leg, you know, not some damn war. But, who was I to tell an old man about lies.


Written by: Tyrese L. Coleman
Photograph by: Garrett Carroll