I married a beautiful woman who was a writer of many stories. Some of them were good and some of them were bad but we loved each other so much through everything there could be and it was good. We often went wandering around down hills and up mountains and through towns and underwater sometimes when we hadn’t smoked in weeks. She loved love madly and wanted to love everything that existed and could’ve existed and had existed because she said her chest was massive and it could contain everything because it had a million coiled springs that could expand forever – and I loved her so I told her I believed her with my life with my eyes with my heart with my mind and she said she was happy that I did so I nodded and said I was happy that she was happy and we loved each other like that. 

Sometimes she would walk into the room without her head – I wrote about this before in this journal and yes she’s been missing since then – and I would understand that something was wrong and we would look around in the house because she would swear it was home but she just couldn’t find it. Sometimes I would come home and there would be people I’d never seen before helping her look for it and after they left I would never see them again. But her head would come in hand eventually and she would cook our favorite meals again and stop smoking cheap cigarettes around the house without making use of an ashtray. I told her once when we were at the table that maybe we should buy an ashtray because we didn’t have one but she said that she didn’t want it because she didn’t condone smoking but when she did it it would be only temporary so it didn’t matter. We didn’t need an ashtray so I nodded. 

One time I found her in bed with a dark cloud over her head like it was a hat but oversized, it covered her entire head and neck and I couldn’t quite tell if she was sad or angry so I touched her and she was stiff and cold so I covered her and left the room to make her a hot drink and when I got back she was standing by the window with her black cloud and flimsy body and staring outside. I said, “are you alright?” She said she was fine but something wasn’t right. I said, “what is it?” She said she didn’t know then shoved her books from on the table to the floor and left the room. I said, “do you want me to do anything?” She said no. I said I could do anything. She said no. I didn’t say anything afterward and put the books back where they belonged. Sometimes one of us would have to leave the other for a break and when the cloud was gone we would feel it and we’d get together again as nothing had happened. 

Sometimes when she would have her head it’d be too big and too pink and there would be a big crystal crown over it and when I’d ask her if she needed hospital or anything she’d laugh and laugh too hard until she couldn’t breathe while shaking her head no. When we went to bed she wouldn’t sleep and when she couldn’t cope with imagining the ceiling as landscapes anymore she’d get out of bed and open the windows and the doors and the kitchen cabinets and invite strangers and neighbors in for a party. When I woke up I’d find strangers trying on our clothes and perfume and sometimes they would be in the toilet combing their hair or brushing their teeth. I woke up once and found a black-haired guy dressed like a cop at the head of the bed. I said what do you go by. He said Fred. I asked if he was alright. He said I had an ugly chin. I have brown eyes and one pair of shoes and sometimes I knew for sure that nobody loved me. An ugly chin couldn’t beat me up but I was slightly hurt. Sometimes during those parties, I found my CDs thrown in the outside bins and that hurt more than having an ugly chin. I’d look for my wife around the house and ask the guests if they’d seen her. Big eyes stick-thin and loud. Some people would have seen her somewhere around the lounge a while ago some people wouldn’t know her at all but we’d be a group and we’d wander around the house for her and it’d take a while for us to find her floating outside with a flock of birds. 

Sometimes I didn’t know her like she wouldn’t know me at all. We’d get up from the same bed and walk under the same roof and use the same toilet chair but wouldn’t recognize each other as if we’d been strangers since ever and we’d never been to bed together and we’d never met. She’d pour coffee in two cups but wouldn’t make mine the way I’d always drunken it and when I cooked she didn’t cook I wouldn’t remember adding more salt and more spices and too much chili pepper because she liked sour food. We’d sit together for hours but we wouldn’t talk and wouldn’t look at each other and probably wouldn’t breathe and it would sickeningly feel like forever but we’d still be strangers sometimes even after we’d go back to bed until something suddenly clicked and things would fit back where they belonged. 

One time she cheated on me with a banquet waiter she met during a reading. When she came back home I told her that I knew what she’d done but she kept denying it I was pissed so I threw glass on the floor and threw her favorite flower vase to the floor too and went out of the house and took her car and drove downtown and bought cigarettes and smoked them all while coughing then bought more and smoked them too and then went home. I didn’t find her in the kitchen nor in the lounge, I found her upstairs in our toilet standing under the showerhead her hair was wet and she looked upset I didn’t say anything she said she’d poured lye over her hair I said “are you mad” she said she was sorry and that she hated herself too much and turned the shower on and the water ran down her body and she screamed her hair was fuming and there was smoke and she was crying because she was burning. I didn’t know what to do because water couldn’t have fixed that I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her and dragged her out of the bath she was still screaming and when I turned the shower off I realized I was screaming too. We went to our neighbor who was a nurse then went all together to A&E and she was hospitalized for a week. 

Her head which had lain on the windowsill for weeks while she’d been gone had suddenly disappeared. I was out for lunch and when I got home I couldn’t find it but there was blood on the floor and on the bedsheets and on the stairs and all the way from the staircase to the backdoor in the kitchen. I walked outside and asked my neighbors if they’d seen my wife. They said, “have you lost your mind?” No really have you lost your mind mate it’s too late. I said, “what do you mean?” They said we can’t believe this is happening again it’s been weeks since your wife has died. I searched their eyes for lies but I found nothing but empty pure color so I left. I had nowhere to go. Then Fred took me back to my cell where I belonged and when I sat on my single bed I reached for my wife’s journal from under my pillow and wrote a little rhyme. We died in a room on a gloomy winter night we went to A&E and dressed in black and white and even though they’d said my heart had made it I never woke up and my morning never came.