5/20/2017 0 Comments Please Try Again by Rachel TannerPlease Try Again There’s somebody moving in across the street from where I live now. I can hear them yelling at each other, from car to truck to car to truck. There are at least ten of them. The ten of them remind me of the two of us, remind me of the days leading up to the first apartment that was equally yours and mine together. You stood in the kitchen and I sat in the living room of the home I’d lived in for three years and you’d lived in for one, packing and cleaning and throwing things away and cleaning and packing. Every so often I would find your paraphernalia, the remnants of the morphine that tried to take you from me a few too many times. Bent spoons Twisted q-tips Pieces of tinfoil Lead from a mechanical pencil (I still don’t understand what purpose that served?) Lighters Hidden anywhere you could reach – on top of cabinets, in shoes, behind the toilet. You were always the best at hiding, but eventually you got clean. Eventually we found you a Suboxone clinic to help your habit be more palatable, less life-altering. You were okay for awhile. People asked me what I did to get you clean, but I did nothing. You did the hard work; you bravely stepped away from your crutch and into the unknown. I merely stood beside you and held your hand. The people moving in across the street are laughing, and I can’t remember the last time my mouth ends turned upward. What I do remember is the day we finally moved into Our Apartment and I texted everyone pictures. “It’s OUR HOME!!!” I typed, delirious with happiness. I always told you that I understood how normal and inevitable relapses were. Nothing could rip me away from you. But you left me and sobriety on the same day, I guess forever, and we haven’t heard from Sober You since then. The last time you contacted me was two weeks ago and it was a threat, in my email inbox. A week before that it was a note left on my car, telling me that I’d die soon. I don’t know where or how you are, but I think about you all the time. I remember how you high-fived the guy from the moving company after you caught him staring at my ass, and I remember thinking that things couldn’t get better than this. I was right. Nothing got better. Bio: Rachel Tanner is a writer from Alabama who thinks she's funny on Twitter (@rickit). Her work can be found in various places like Apocrypha and Abstractions, Transition, Cheap Pop, The Atticus Review, Pentimento, Empty Sink Publishing, etc. She's not afraid to cuddle all your pets and "like" all your profile pictures.
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