Contours of My Jealous Heart

They must come from somewhere, these words. How do they emerge from the reticule in which they’ve been hiding with reckless abandon, awaiting their turn in the spotlight. Pinch them out, as with wirecutter prongs? Pull mightily, as with dental forceps on a stubborn tooth? Cough them up, as in a shakedown by marauders? All unbidden, they show up imperfectly ready for me to mold them into something tangible, comprehensible, for your amusement or edification. Your education I leave to the institutes of higher (and lower) learning. Cropping up most often is not rage or remorse or regret but sheer, rank, searing jealousy, incessant and irradicable, stemming from loss, my loss of you.

I’m lost trying to give voice to the feeling. “Ineffable” comes to mind, and I don’t even understand the word. I might as well be describing veins on a leaf or the hoot of a barn owl to come close. Try to depict the musical F# verbally, and you’ll see what I mean. Ineffable, at least, is a placeholder of recognizable coinage, a proxy with purchase. It’s no use, though, as the razor-sharp demon shivs its ugliness into my psyche at the most inopportune moments, namely, every chance it sees to cause me mischief, like my hooligan of a cat. Jealousy trolls around my tongue like dry saliva, its acerbity shredding my heart with dagger-like precision.

Unlike “guilt,” which has no useful purpose, virtually or otherwise, jealousy punches well above its weight in derangement and endurance. It’s irrational, like certain numerical calculations and combinations, but it never fails to do the trick: complete decimation of my articulable senses, ones once knowing beauty and joy but no longer. Oh, just fuck off. Jealousy, I mean. Guilt, too, for that matter.