This Is Goodbye

This is dedicated to a couple of friends who have recently had painful separations.
Sometimes when you try to offer help to people they assume you can't know how badly they feel. It's true. I can't know how badly they feel, but I do know this:
Two months ago as I stared out the window into my backyard watching my girlfriend of the last four and a half years hanging out her last load of laundry (the dryer is broken), I thought about having packed up her van that day, and that tomorrow she would get in it, and my best friend in all the world would drive down my street for the last time. It was over, and she was going home, 2033 miles away. No more cuddling; no more TV; no more dinners; no more drinks; no more shows; no more dvds;
no more shopping; no more drives; no more camping; no more visits to relatives; no more arguments; no more laughing at jokes; no more kisses; no more playing in the snow; no more sitting in the garden on a summer afternoon; no more knowing that at the end of the day I wouldn't be alone.
This is an approximation of how that felt, only you'll have to imagine my knotted intestines wrapped tightly around my lungs, and the giant grapefruit that my throat had turned into, and the salty water gushing out of my eye-sockets. Maybe I'll do a collage later.
She's gone.

I still talk to her. Things are ok. The fresh scars are beginning to scab over.

This is pencil on copy paper, the first one I grabbed which turned out to be a Bic .7mm mechanical pencil. It is completely from my imagination--zero reference. Yes, I'm familiar with razors.
Remind me never to try ripples freehand again.
6x8 inches



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