Day 202: How I Will Behave Better

(I'm part of a continued community of writers and mourners in a 30-day writing workshop found here: http://www.refugeingrief.com/30daywriting/) This is day 11.

September 18, 2014.

This is how I will behave better.

When my friend leans across the table

from me at our local ice cream shop

while I am picking the almonds out of

my jamoca almond fudge and she is

sweeping her spoon across her

scoop of strawberry cheesecake-

When she leans across that table and

says, “You think your life is bad?” and

then proceeds to tell me about a friend

of hers who found out her husband

was gay and is getting a divorce-

You think YOUR life is bad? and how

she also has to get heart surgery,

this. This is how I will behave better.

I will begin by throwing what’s left

of my jamoca almond fudge, no, hurling

it, across the room until it splatters on

the glass doors of the nearby freezer.

The one with the little cakes shaped like

dogs and stars and rainbows and shit.

I will reach across the table and snatch

the ice cream cup out of her hands,

dumping its contents onto the floor.

I will fling my shoes off and send them

flying in any direction I choose and I

will use my bare feet to dance wildly-

dance with rage, dance with reckless

abandon- in what was her perfectly

round scoop of cheese-fucking-cake

ice cream. I will do this as she sits

slack-jawed and the change in the hand

of the woman at the counter slips from

her fingertips and falls to the tile floor.

I will make sounds like a banshee. I

will laugh and scream and tear at my

clothing and make sounds like a banshee.

I will lie on my belly like a snake and

drag myself across the ice-cream slicked

floor, writhing this way and that and I

will scream like a woman who’s lost

the entire world. Like a woman

who’s lost everything she held

dear. I will curse loudly at the

space between me and the box of

ashes sitting in the childhood home

of my love, miles and miles away. I

will scream so loudly that space

between will be filled with my sounds.

EVERYONE HEAR ME NOW! HEAR

THE SOUNDS OF MY RAGE!  HEAR

ME NOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

And only then will the laughter

commence. The uncontrollable I’m-

in-church-and-shouldn’t-be-laughing

laughter. I will flip to my back there

on the floor of the ice cream shop,

strawberry cheesecake ice cream

matted in my hair, and I will laugh

to the heavens above while my friend

remains mouth agape and the change

from the lady at the counter still

makes its jingling roll to a steady stop.

And when that coin and I each make

our last wobbles back and forth there

on the floor and after the several seconds

of silence that follow, I will sit up, no

gracefully come to my feet, wipe the

last of my jamoca almond fudge from

my mouth, and say to my friend, “I’m

sorry. What was that you were saying?”