Michael Milligan Dead to Me

Dead to Me

This afternoon from the apartment next door the old woman’s voice again through the walls. “Fine, go on lying there. You’re dead already. You’re dead. You’re dead to me.” Over and over, day after day.

On an afternoon like this, when rain scours down like the last time we talked, both of us hatless, cold trickling then torrenting down our necks, soaking our collars, and shirts.

On an afternoon like this you told me the secret you had kept a life time, my lifetime. What does it mean that I have always known, that for most of that life, my life, I have not cared enough to question, or to bother repeating?

On an afternoon like this I touched your shoulder, my hand raw and wet, and faked sympathy my sympathy raw ─ and wet. On an afternoon like this, rain raw as the gaping wound you imagined as all your own, I pretended until I believed I did not pretend. The earth’s core was already plugged into me like an anode, battery acid slick as rain dripping off the noses and chins of two men standing hatless in the deluge, one touching the other on the shoulder, a pretense of touch, a touch stripped away with the soaked clothes peeled off in the mud room so as not to drip on the newly waxed kitchen floor. Next door the black dog they keep chained outside barks through the downpour. “You’re dead. You’re so dead. You’re past dead.”

Michael Milligan