Slow It Down
Something Not Worth Telling
She was on the bathroom floor.
3 AM.
The light from the hallway cut across her shoulder.
She was crying so hard she wasn’t making noise.
I was sitting on the floor with her.
My back against the tub.
Her head on my chest.
My hand on her hair.
I wasn’t saying anything.
There was nothing to say.
She had taken something.
I don’t know what.
She wouldn’t tell me.
She never told me.
The not-telling was the deal we had …
I love you, but you do not get to know
I love you but you do not get to count the bottles
I love you but you do not get to look in the bag
I love you but you do not get to ask, and if you ask, I will leave …
…and I had agreed to that deal
a long time ago
because agreeing was the price of getting to be on the floor with her at 3 AM
and the floor was where I wanted to be.
Even like this.
Even at 3 AM.
Even with her shaking.
The floor was better than the door closing.
She was scared.
She was always scared.
She was scared the way an animal is scared in a thunderstorm
… not of any one thing, just of the storm itself, the whole sky falling on her at once.
I would hold her.
I would say baby it’s okay, baby slow it down, baby I’ve got you, baby breathe.
She would breathe.
For a minute.
Then she would start spinning again.
Then I would say it again.
Slow it down.
Slow it down.
Slow it down.
I said it like a prayer.
I said it like a man who used to be a pastor
holding a woman who used to be somebody’s daughter
on a tile floor in an apartment that was not mine
at an hour that was not visiting hours
Slow it down, baby.
Slow it down.
She wouldn’t slow down.
You can say slow it down a hundred times.
You can mean it.
You can hold them.
You can breathe with them.
You can sit on the floor for hours.
You can pour the bottle out.
You can take her phone away.
You can drive her to the hospital.
You can drive her home from the hospital.
You can be there every single night for a decade.
She still won’t slow down.
Because the slowing down was never your job to do.
The slowing down was hers.
She wasn’t going to do it.
You were the one bringing the brakes.
The car was hers.
She wasn’t using them.
I would lay her in bed.
I would lay there next to her.
I would put my hand on her chest to feel her breathe.
I would feel her breathe.
I would count her breaths the way you count to a hundred when you can’t sleep.
Some nights I would fall asleep counting.
Some nights I would lay there until 6 AM with my hand still on her chest because I was afraid that if I took it off, the breathing would stop.
That’s not love.
I know it’s not love.
I know what it is now.
It’s vigil.
I was holding vigil over a woman who was slowly dying inside her own life
and she was letting me do it because somebody had to
her kids couldn’t because her kids were her kids
her friends wouldn’t because her friends had stopped picking up.
So I did it.
The vigil was my job.
The vigil was my whole job.
Everything is spinning.
It’s spinning and being the only thing in the room not spinning
You stop drinking as much because she’s drinking too much.
You stop sleeping because she’s not sleeping.
You stop eating because she’s not eating.
You stop being because she’s not being
You become a thermostat set to her temperature.
You don’t have a temperature anymore.
You just have hers.
Slow it down, baby.
Slow it down.
I would say it driving home from her place.
I would say it in the truck at 4 AM.
I would say it to the steering wheel.
I would say it to the moon.
I would say it to myself…
Slow it down, baby.
I’m in pieces too.
I’m too young to drown in this.
I am too damn old to drown in this.
Somebody let me out.
Somebody pull me out.
Somebody slow this whole thing down before it kills both of us.
Nobody pulled me out.
Not because they didn’t love me.
Because I had not let them.
Because if I let them, they’d have asked questions.
And the questions would have led to her.
I gave her every brake I had.
I gave her every slow it down I had.
I gave her every prayer I had, and a few I didn’t have
but invented in the moment because she was crying.
She didn’t slow down.
She was never going to slow down.
The slowing down was never available to her.
She didn’t have brakes.
She had me
I had brakes
she used my brakes to stop just enough to keep going
then she’d go again
I’d brake again
she’d go again
I’d brake again
one day I looked down and the brakes were gone.
metal on metal.
Sparks off my own life.
Smoke in the cab.
Her in the passenger seat still asking me to slow her down.
She stopped the car
Not I saved her.
Not we slowed down together.
Not we figured it out.
The ride ended…
She left me and went somewhere I could never follow…no one could follow
Slow it down…
Slow it down…
Please, Lord, slow it down…
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"She left me and went somewhere I could never follow…no one could follow": meaning, she died? My WIFE went like that. And Alcohol was the ride.
This could be the best thing you've written. She was 16, I was 19, or 20. Say too much, you're forcing her hand. Say nothing and she has no boundary, no one caring enough to say enough, at the risk of flinging open the gateway to excess by daring to say, enough.