Agata Antonow

Three Things I Didn’t Pack in My Husband’s Suitcase

i.
His razor

I’m up at six and you’re still snoring, so I pack your suitcase because the shuttle will be here at any moment to take you to the airport and lord knows you won’t pack. I remember moves and flights barely caught while you stuffed stained t-shirts and dripping soap into a carry-on on
the way out. That’s a memory I have: your broad back walking past me out of doors, the back of your neck tight with anger.

You can’t take this razor, anyway, not with airport restrictions now. I hold its heft in my palm, picture the curve of metal, the tender curve of your throat, pink and wet with shaving. Razor’s edge, raising the edge.

ii.
The tiny child
On the ultrasounds, small as an olive, curled in on itself as though it knew the world would be too much for it after all. Return to sender. I carry our baby in the crook of my hand now, sing to it, it’s large as a lychee after a year, growing so slowly, not making a sound.

I remember the rain after the hospital stay and you holding me outside in the parking lot, hard enough to hurt, my insides still bruised and bleeding. I wanted to tell you not to crush the baby, not to press hard. That you couldn’t squeeze out the sickness, the red hurt and the yawning empty. You squeezed and squeezed me like an accordion, your own face wet, and I still haven’t named the baby.

iii.
My memories
Last week is wet-blurry, but I remember the one time you held my hand to help me out of the car. It had been so long that I realized you had a new callus—a rough spot that dug into my thumb when you pulled me from the seat. I was still carrying the baby in my palm, you know, but you shoved at only me.

Our bodies speak. The baby curls away from you when I hold its lychee pink skin in my palm. And I am screaming and screaming at you when I walk behind you, looking into the windows in Toronto’s downtown. Each bright dress and trendy sunhat a screech. And you say as much in the way your shoulders hunch over ahead of me, your head ducking, as though from the rain.