Her

I read a book when I was eleven. It had a white cover with one word written in italics. The word was “Her.” If you’re wondering who Her is she was a beautiful painter who the narrator of the book was lucky enough to call his wife. So the story goes that one day he comes home to find that she is gone. No note, no warning and only a pack of smokes on the table that he knows isn’t hers. She had left with a man who was also a painter- because two flames always seek to burn together- but as we know sometimes they’re fed oxygen and then the house bursts into flames. So then she comes back. He lets her come back simply because of her. The woman who comes back is different though. She walks the same, looks the same, and he thinks to himself, “I KNOW if I let her touch me, she would touch me the same.” But it feels different. So he becomes convinced that someone is wearing his wife’s skin, some alien has crawled under her, there is no way that things could feel this different when he looks at her or when she talks to him or when she dances or when she sings the same songs he came to adore her for. And this book… is the way I feel when I look at you now. Like there’s no way it’s you. Like some other woman is wearing the hoodie that has my name on the back- a name which never meant much before as it belongs to my coke head father; but now is different. They say certain things are hereditary. That addiction breeds disease and even though I never met him maybe I was passed down a few of these from my father. Things like addiction and being a hopeless romantic. My mother says that when they dated once he wasn’t on drugs but she thought he was because he picked a flower off the road and walked seven miles to hand it to her just to show her something so beautiful yet couldn’t compare to her. He wrote her love letters before he went to drink and drew her pictures where the paper was always coke laced. This makes me think of a day I couldn’t stop moving to save my life and insisted on making you a canvas because I needed to see what you would create. So I sawed and hammered in a bedroom keeping my neighbor awake and did things like massaged your back and laid on a beach the first night listening to music in silence so that I could enjoy a night with someone like you. Rest assured every time I was drinking somewhere there. So I’m glad that I’m not drinking anymore because like my father sometimes my brain convinces me I have to do things. Like today I would grab a drink and insist on talking to you not for anything but to simply notionalize a world where you are still her. Where your touch would feel the same, your voice sound just as warm, and my body buzzed when our eyes met. But I know it wouldn’t be the same. It would be pretend letting my imagination build reasons for the time apart. Maybe it was false to begin with. Just genetics making me so high again in order to cope with the low that alcohol has taught me. Maybe it was false for you too. Maybe it never existed. Maybe we were just two fucked up people, one not taking meds, one who stomps on problems both looking for a little way to escape. But when I see your pictures. When I see the wine glass that touched your lips that sits on my desk. When I hear “same drugs”. I am reminded that at one time, at one point, in some way- I thought you were her.