The Longest Wait.

I buried my lover in a hole. He didn’t struggle much; he blinked and furrowed his brow as the sand rose over his cheeks. He’s been stuck in there for a while now, waiting for a change of scenery.

He always told me he wanted to be buried when he died. He told me so often it started getting morbid.

“Bury me,” he’d say.

“Right now?” I’d ask.

He said that this way I would always know where he was. And I do. I feel him pushing down from underneath me. Sometimes I’ll see a patch of grass growing up through the cracks in the cement. “Be quiet,” I whisper and squash it down with the sole of my shoe.

We went to the beach. We made love in the sand. He asked me if when the waves crashed onto this shore they were receding on the other end of the ocean. “You know,” he said, “because it’s just one continuous body of water.” I told him I didn’t know and brushed globs of mud out of my hair.

He told me he could stay there forever. “Right here” he said like he had seen all the other places in the world and decided that this was the nicest one. “Forever,” I said, “is a very long time.”

That’s when I knew I had to leave. Leave where I was and where I’d been. Leave things behind. I hope I can go back, some day when I’m ready, when that beach is a place where I can stay forever too.

I laid his body out, carefully, over the beach. Then, I just kept cupping handfuls of sand and drizzling it over his body. I tried to hide every piece of my lover’s body, everywhere I’d kissed and everywhere I’d known. He spit when the sand got in his mouth, but other than that, he stayed pretty still. Like I said, he didn’t struggle much. I sat at his side and covered him up. Sand collected in tiny mounds over his body, all different shapes and sizes, like a new world ready to be explored.

The next morning, his little neck popped out of the sand like a helpless turtle. I lied down and pressed my face up close to his. I smiled. I kept smiling this big, ridiculous smile that showed all my teeth. I figured I had to keep smiling or he’d start screaming or crying. I gave him seven big wet kisses, one for each day of the week. I styled his hair like a rock star with some gel I had in my purse. Then, I combed it back flat so he looked like a gangster. We talked about poetry and sang his favorite songs in rounds. We played “I spy.” I spied the sand, he spied the sea. We moved on. I tried to talk about anything except being buried in the sand. I tried to talk over him whenever he started to open his mouthI put on my clothes and brushed his cheek with my sand covered hand, exfoliating it. I put a bucket and a shovel a few feet from his head. I took a few steps backwards, holding eye contact, and smiled when I waved goodbye.

I went to the biggest cities in the world. London, Paris, Tokyo, New York. I bought him shot glasses. I got him one from each of the duty free shops at all the major international airports. I put in a little sand from the shore or some loose gravel from the street. What else do you get a man who’s buried in the sand? One time I took a picture of the coast in Ireland where a wave was drawing back into the sea. Someday, I’ll ask him if he remembers what the waves were doing on the other side. About half past noon on a Tuesday, I’ll tell him, and place the photo on the ground in front of him.

I liked to imagine he wasn’t alone. Like some woman was walking down the beach and saw him and fell madly in love and decided to keep him company for the rest of his life. That is, the rest of his life in that hole. Or maybe she saw him and decided it was a good idea. Like I started a trend; burying men. I couldn’t help but smile imagining him and a couple of other guys stuck on each side with all the time in the world to complain and wonder where their lovers are.

Sometimes I thought, maybe he’s not even there anymore. But I doubted it. I don’t know anything about geography, longitude or latitude, but I knew I could feel him, on the other side of the world, pulling at me with gravity. Sometimes, I’d dig my finger in the sand, only an inch or two and I could feel myself getting closer to him. Sometimes, I’d make tiny circles and think I might loosen up the dirt just enough so that the dirt under that moves the dirt under that and I can see this long, beautiful chain reaction, loosening the earth from around him just enough so he could squeeze out. I’d close my eyes and feel the vibrations biting at my fingertips. Sometimes, I’d watch the wind blow layer after layer off the surface of the beach and imagine a day when his little feet popped out of the ground.

“There you are!” I’d say and lift him up by the ankles.

I thought about it for a while; grabbing a shovel and heading home. I thought about taking the next flight out of Venice while I was sipping cappuccino at a coffee shop. I thought about taking the train back from New York when I thought for a second that I could see him with my binoculars from the top floor of the Empire State Building. I held myself back as best I could. That’s when I started freeing things. I liberated everything I could find to take my mind off him; caged, stored away and preserved. I bought packs of cigarettes just to unwrap them, took the lids off trashcans as I walked down the street and pulled the sheets off the bed one by one. I got thrown out of a bodega for unscrewing the caps off the soda cans. I whispered inspirational maxims while the carbonation squeezed free. A portly Korean man told me either I bought them all or he’d call the cops. I bit the skin off my lips until they bled while a pile of peanut shells lay at my feet.

And then the first letter came. The first letter was written in sand. I found it one day on a beach on the other side of the world. No address, no stamp. A pensive group of seagulls looked across at one another and nodded. Inside I found a blank sheet of paper and a couple of handfuls of sand in the bottom of the envelope.

It could have said anything. It could have been the most articulate, most thoughtful, most beautiful letter ever written. It could’ve said everything I’ve ever wanted to hear, and I let it. I let it say that he’s getting along beautifully, missing me terribly and safe, right where I left him. Some days it explained and some days it consoled. Some days it complimented my legs. It said I have the sexiest legs he’s ever seen in his life, and goes on to detail every moment he couldn’t take his eyes off them, lost in the curves of my calves. I sprinkle some sand onto the page and spell out ‘legs,’ while precious tops of letters ride away.

I lay naked on my bed in a hotel in Athens, covered with millions of granules of sand. I closed my eyes and saw him forming words that can’t be written in ink, words that can’t stay on a page for too long. And then I felt him writing my body, pushing with all his might against the walls of his hole, skin pressed against the earth.

Then, after a while I ran out sand. Luckily, it happened right around the time I ran out of things to tell myself. The last word I wrote was ‘goodbye’ and then I brushed it into the trash. A little sand in the bed, a little sand in the trash, A little trail of him behind me to stay in all the places I’ve left.

That’s when I got the second letter. It washed up on the coast of Greece and landed on a pad of shells. The second letter was written in water. It was wrinkled, hardened and tasted like salt. The second letter said everything else; a letter unwritten. White-washed, fresh start, clean slate. I could imagine him writing horrible things, cursing me for leaving him there, stuck in the ground like that, and then, right before he stuffed it in the envelope, he looked over it, remembered me and my sky-blue eyes and washed it all off. Crackling beneath my fingers, it seemed to say no hard feelings, no harm done. The clear ink filling the page to the borders.

A letter in water says everything unsaid. It loves ambivalence and begs a reply It says to keep going and come back home. And I did, I went right around the world and then one day I stood in front of him, right back where I started.

“Hello,” I said, dusting off his brow.

“Hello,” he said, spitting sand from his lips.

“Did you miss me,” I asked, knowing full well the answer.

“How long have you been gone?”

“I’m not exactly sure, years I’d imagine.”

“Years?” He asked, “really?”

I expected him to jump out. No, I waited for him to jump out. I waited for him to show me he could have gotten out whenever he wanted. Sly fox, I’d say, smirking as he shoved his way out in a giant explosion of sand with his fists held high in the air. We’d embrace and be happy and go home to clean each other off and tell each other about our dreams.

“Can you help me out of here” He asked me after a while, his tired eyes gazing up, helplessly, admiring shot glasses.