The Shakes
by Amanda Miska
oo much tincture into the dropper and onto the tongue before bed, and I called you after so many months of no contact.
I tiptoed, knees knocking, to my ex-husband’s bedroom to wake him up. I asked for grounding so my body could stop its tiny convulsions. He followed me back down the hall to our old room, sat with me as I got back in bed (we’d been separated for years at this point, co-living with our kids), placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. He had a new serious girlfriend and I asked if he was in love. When I’m high, love’s the only thing I can think about. The usual buffers—capitalism, mortality, laundry—dissipate. He rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t know, maybe.” He’d always found my earnestness silly, even when I was sober.
I had also just started seeing someone, the one who’d given me the tincture and told me how much to take without yet knowing I was a total lightweight. I’d avoided drugs until way late in my twenties thanks to 80s propaganda and fear of my dad’s wrath. My new lover was sweet and gentle; our affection felt like warm campfire glow, not the forest flames you and I had been, sparked the day we met. My therapist tells me this is healthy, but part of me still craves the awe of destruction.
As the drugs leave my system, I come to stillness again. My ex-husband goes back to bed. I sleep, deep and dreamless.
You call the next day and I let it ring. After a few beats, I text you that I didn’t mean to call, which isn’t exactly the truth, but the truth is no longer relevant in the sunrise, in the quiet of my body. If I had actually been dying, I would have already been dead.
T
Author's Note
I have many times made the joke,"If I die, you can leave my internet search history, but delete the NOTES from the app in my phone!" My weirdest random thoughts and ideas and phrases, whether they come while I'm taking a walk, or in the middle of night, go into my Notes. I was recently trying to purge my phone of unnecessary data, and came across some longer notes, tiny drafts almost, that I'd written but forgotten about. I haven't written a full draft of anything, let alone published it, for over five years now. But I had been feeling the gravitational pull back to writing, so I gave myself over to turning the tiny draft into a more fully formed thing. I was lucky to have a piece of small fiction at matchbook in the earlier stages of my writing journey, and now, having a piece of nonfiction feels a little like a return and rebirth at the same time. And if anyone's wondering: I haven't touched marijuana in any form since. As for the awe: I'm starting to find it more in the act of creation.
Amanda Miska lives, writes, and creates in the Philadelphia suburbs. She is the former editor of Split Lip Press and Magazine. Her work can be found at The Rumpus, Salon, Catapult, Hobart, Wigleaf, Midnight Breakfast, decomP, and elsewhere.
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