The Order of Things

I didn’t mind when prolonged grief officially became a disorder. I liked how the left wheel of our laundry cart, melted by the baseboard heater, still clip-clopped on the sidewalk, how the unbalanced signal flashed on the washing machine, as if missing your half. You liked to lay socks on the radiators, but I always preferred the intense heat of industrial dryers, especially in those first years alone. When I peeled the socks apart, I let them burn my hands to break through the numbness. The big lint trap captured most of the crumpled tissues from my pockets and I picked the rest off my clothes like scabs. Rather than fold clothes on the table, I stuffed them in the cart, wobbled home, and then spread them still warm on both sides of our bed. 

I lived alone in our second place for four years, clinging to your clothes and jewelry until I was renovicted. I bought a condo with a washing machine but went back to the laundromat with my sweaters, jackets, and coats. I was itchy all over, and afraid I had bedbugs. When I brought dry cleaning home, I left it on hangers in the hall closet beside all your clothes I had stuffed into bags. I stored your photos and trinkets in plastic containers in the bedroom closet to protect them. They sat behind stones I took from our garden, the ones you shaped into a different fish each spring for luck. I had rubbed the soil off each stone with my thumb, conjuring a genie to grant me a wish. 

I slept in my clothes for months. In the morning, I checked the sheets, the double-sided tape on the floor, the line of baking soda along the baseboards. I brought my finds to the exterminators three times, spreading detritus on the counter to compare against their display of bugs. There was never a match. 

I went to my GP, an allergist, and finally a dermatologist who gave me pills that calmed the itch. It took me a year to dump the bags, refill the drawers with my clothes, and pull up the double-sided tape. When I caressed your photos and trinkets in the container, they stuck to my skin so I put them back on the shelves. I hid all those pieces of you when I started dating. It’s only me who sees the dust on the bookshelf as absence. I’m testing it out. This new order of things.

Mark Foss is the author of two novels and a collection of stories; a third novel is forthcoming in 2024. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Lost Balloon, the great weather for MEDIA anthology, and elsewhere. His fiction and CNF have been supported by the Marble House Project and the Canada Council for the Arts. Apart from his own writing, he is the co-editor of The Book of Judith (New Village Press, 2022), an homage to the life of poet, writer, and teaching artist Judith Tannenbaum and her impact on incarcerated and marginalized students. He lives in Montreal. Find out more at http://www.markfoss.ca.

A Song for Mark