convos with my husband

“Something’s fucked up with my liver.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve never been this tired, and when I wake up in the morning…I see a lot of yellow.”

I don’t know whether he means it literally—as if yellowed vision is a symptom of liver failure—or whether he means that yellow things seem more apparent to him in the morning: the dish towel, the kitchen walls, the weak autumn light. A Jungian omen. The unconscious speaking through color.

Or maybe he means it as a metaphor. Every morning, everything he sees is bile-yellow, and that’s how he knows his liver is failing.

I believe he means all three at once. Our minds have always been that alike.

Maybe I’m silent too long, because he cuts through the cool autumn air with a soft, almost conversational, “You might be a widow soon.”

The word enters my mind and my body cannot feel them.

“That’s not funny,” I say.

But it isn’t only that it’s not funny. It’s that the possibility is always there, taking up too much space.

Rinsing the dishes: Paul is going to die.

Applying SPF to my face: I will have to figure out how to sell his motorcycle.

Giving the dogs their pills: Arrangements will have to be made in Indiana.

Answering an email: I can call the neighbor who gave me a book. She would help me. She isn’t working. I could pay her.

Turning off the light above the stove: Paul is going to die.

This is how I spend the mornings: doing ordinary things and rehearsing the practical shape of his absence.

Perhaps when I wake up in the morning…I see a lot of black.

Our minds have always been that alike.