I don’t need to resurrect you because you do so without my consent.
Outside the supermarket this time.
I’m shoving the squeaky cart, the desert sun melting me.
You cast no shadow on the greasy black pavement that stretches out my own. Your rank is pungent, your rot baking in summer’s swelter.
The pit in my chest wrinkles inward a little more.
“Get in.” I open the trunk and push aside the blood-caked ax and shovel.
You climb in with the groceries.
You never speak. You don’t need to. Those empty cavern eyes say it all.
I slam the trunk door down.
It’s a long drive to our sandy patch.
Our tent is already set up, flapping fluorescent yellow in the flogging wind.
The gorge is painted all the colors of the sunburnt sky before the shadows sink into the deep folds of earth. Stars pop out as I open the zipper and creep inside the tent. Our place.
Our bottle of supermarket wine is already opened. My first time tasting it. Again.
You assure me one sip won’t hurt. (This is a lie.)
I grow intoxicated with sleep.
The inside of the plastic tent is spinning. I’m sick. I’m going to puke—
I am grateful for you. My best friend.
You promise to take care of me—you still don’t speak but I remember when you did—you stroke my hair like I am your child.
I am so lucky to be gazed upon with such trustworthy empty eye sockets.
To warrant such an earnest toothless smile.
I’m so sleepy. So sleep, you whisper. I’ll watch over you.
I lie down. As my consciousness slips away from me you climb on top of my body—separate me from myself. I am limp. I am quicksand. I am the pit at the bottom of the gorge.
I am black out drunk—no—drugged. My limbs hang heavy as the surrounding mountains.
I can’t fight what has already happened.
Perhaps if we perform this ritual enough something will change.
This time when you are done with me I will awaken with newfound empowerment.
When I fetch my ax when I hack away at your putrid flesh and bury you deep in the gorge that is my heart I will feel vindicated this time. The resurrection will bring closure. Again.
This time will be the last time you come back.
The next time you visit I am in my kitchen. I’m slicing a peach, juices bright and bleeding across the cutting board—I smell your putrid decay.
“Of course, you feel unsafe.” Doctor drives with me to the gorge the next time I kill and bury you. But talking about what you still won’t kill you.
I can still feel those undead fingers. That undead mouth. That undead worm that wriggles inside.
If I return you to the gorge—keep you contained to this time and place—you can’t bleed into my life outside.
“What would it feel like if you let the pain go?” Doctor asks.
This time instead of chopping you up like firewood I let you out of the tent. Let you roam around and follow me down into the gorge. I let you get lost inside. It feels good to let you wander off. To forget you. Mostly.
Some nights I hear the coyotes. They sound like little girls screaming.
I wonder if they are tearing your undead flesh apart. Feasting on your putrid meat.
You haven’t returned since.
I still worry you will show up at my doorstep. In my nightmares. Out of the corner of my vision.
I’m imagining you.
I’m terrified I’ll resurrect you again when I’m drunk or lonely and hating myself or right before I fall asleep or in the shower or slicing a peach and the juices run bright. When my partner tries to touch me and the hairs raise on my skin—I don’t want to be touched. Even by Morgan who has been nothing but supportive.
I don’t want to be loved or even admired.
I don’t know how to trust.
When Morgan asks me if I want to go camping next weekend I break up with them.
I want to release us both from this spell but I’m not strong enough.
I’ll never be strong enough to stop thinking about you when I least expect it.
You return.
And return.
Each visit I grow more numb. More separated. Splintered.
The price of resurrection is the body—my body—given over to you without giving.
I let you walk around in me, feel the shock of this skin.
I don’t know how to “get over” trauma. I can only try to process it as it comes.
“You don’t have to forgive him,” Doctor says, “but you have to forgive yourself.”
The person I’ve been hacking up and burying over and over isn’t you. It’s me.
I’ve been blaming myself. Hating myself.
I shouldn’t have been so trusting.
So easy.
I shouldn’t have led you on.
I shouldn’t have put myself in the situation.
You will never read this, will you?
Because you have sockets for eyes. Maggots for lashes.
I’m not writing this for you.
I’m writing this for Doctor. You’re one of our many topics.
I can hear the coyotes howling.
I can’t fill in the gorge, but I can nourish the ecosystem, let the pain grow into cacti. I can water the prickly pear.
This desert is resilient.