SPACE JUNK, THE NIGHTTIME BRACE

The night she failed to return, I thought nothing of it. The pillow might well have smelt of her sweat, her breath, her last glass of wine, her last meal, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant, but I thought nothing of it.

Two nights after she had failed to return, I found myself gazing at The Pretty Girl’s nighttime brace, surgical pink plastic and stainless steel wire, abandoned on a white tissue on the white painted floorboards next to the head of our mattress.

Every time I gingerly sniffed over it in the coming days, two days, it smelt vaguely of her breath, her last meal, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant. For a further two days I imagined it still smelt vaguely of her breath, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant. For another couple of days I managed, occasionally, to convince myself, in an argument of desperate factions, that I could catch faint hints of her breath, her toothpaste, touches of mouthwash, traces of perfume, her inhalant, but then, two more days and I was inventing the smell of her breath, her last glass of wine, her last meal, her toothpaste and mouthwash, traces of her perfume, her inhalant.

And then, it all just vanished into impossibility.

That night I slipped the brace into my mouth and lived its surgical pink plastic texture, steel wire, a torture against my bleeding gums. I made it hurt, and in spite of the hurt, all taste of her was long lost in silent arguments of factitious memories however hard I tried to suck her life back out of the ultimate souvenir of our intimacy.

The last souvenir, the one and only thing surviving that had lived inside of her that had not been flushed away or recycled into the detritus of the outside world, for, even the blood from her last period had been tasted on my tongue during hours, swallowed, and all too quickly digested, but at least tasted, more than three weeks before the night she had failed to return. And I had thought everything of it, she, nothing of it.