not telling

ellen orleans

For months into years she doesn't tell you anything. You share dinners, mattress and sheets, a morning paper, but only you share your day. You used to tell of your triumphs, but now you understand she prefers to hear of your fears, your weakness. Of hers, she says nothing.

She turns her reticence into a game. Rebuff, refuse. Body check. It's ice hockey across the table. You are the puck.

She'd tease you for saying that, regards her withholdings as a private joke between the two of you. But you aren't on that team, you didn't make the cut, so, in fact, the joke does not work. Cannot.

For you, the game becomes trying to get in. Knocking on doors and windows, pushing against loose boards. Feeling around in the dark for sliding panels, crumbling brick. The house is airtight. You try digging a foundation. You think you will score points for determination but the ground below is rock and clay, cement and concrete, striations of twisted steels girders and cast iron pipes. Indifferent to your industry, the ground wears down your shovel, then your fingernails, finally your teeth.

It is difficult to talk.

Months into years past the hour you should have packed up and walked out, you finally do and this is when, huddled and racked on the floor, she tells you what she should have kept to herself.

Your were supposed to be my transition.

The one who healed me for the next one.

No one should have to hear this. Nor this:

Those were not tears following passion. Never. They were tears for my body's betrayal of the one before you. The one I never would have left.

The one she never did.