The wet concrete had never been so intriguing. I touched my bare right toe to the slick-with-rain concrete slab beneath my feet,but recoiled at its unctuousness. In my ears, a song whose drum cadence matched the raindrops and whose guttural bass rolled with the thunder. In my lap, a delicate teacup with swirls of crimson and lapis. 

My gaze stayed fixed to the slab because if I looked up, I had to face my change. 

He left an hour ago. “I don’t want to be married to you anymore,” my own voice saying it, still rang in my ears.  

My eyes lifted to the pale yellow walls of the room in which I was sitting. Buttercream.  

No cheerful emanations.

The walls of the porch where I sat rocking, a porch that once seemed like ours, were sallow with the grey of the day. My lungs filled with a deep inhale, expelled with a dragon breath just like I learned in yoga—a way to rid oneself of the stale air from deep down. The serpentine coil of the smoke from the burning cigarette in the ash tray next to me met my nostrils as a reminder to take a last, long drag before I snuffed it out 

You’re going to regret this when he finds someone else and you’re still alone.

Remembering these words my mother said caused a break in my curious meditation. I felt my throat tighten and my chest burn, but not with fear of her statement being true. I didn’t care. I would gladly gift wrap him and present him to this “someone else,” whoever she was. I mostly felt pangs of disappointment from not being supported in this decision. But even without, I was compelled to end my marriage. Such a risk for which I thirsted. The fresh air I needed to keep living. 

The conversation was heavy. I sat rigid in the black metal glider—my gaze cast downward into the empty seat beside me. I examined the chipped black paint under which was a rusted white. But there was light under darkness. 

“I’ve thought about it. I can’t be married to you anymore.” My voice shook. In my head, the words played on a loop, moving free and easy. Out loud I was sputtering like an old gas engine trying to propel, reminding myself that sometimes there’s a little backfire before the launch. 

He sat slumped in a straight-backed chair, his face blank like usual.  He was emotionally unavailable, never able to express anything. He pulled a pack of Camel Crush cigarettes out of the front pocket of his black scrub shirt. He deliberately selected a cigarette out of the half empty pack, popped the bead near the filter and placed it between lips framed with two-day stubble. The click-grind-hiss of the lighter broke the silence for a brief second. Then the delicate crackle of that first drag. The exhaled smoke swirled its way out of the porch’s screen. He turned his face towards me, penetrating with is blue eye. 

“Is this what you want?” He said quietly. As if he really needed to ask. The toxicity of our marriage, the constant fighting, the emptiness. Didn’t that speak for itself? 

“Yes.” 

He leaned up, stubbed out his cigarette, and sat back in a huff. An audible sigh escaped his mouth. He inhaled deeply through his nose and heaved his 6’1” body out of the too-small chair. With the back door’s knob turned half-way, he stopped and glared at me. I felt his gaze but my eyes remained steadfastly forward because that was the new direction of my life. Bad or good, it would at least go forward and that was enough for me. 

The door closed. I listened for the familiar sounds of leaving. The garage door screeched open and came to an abrupt slam when it reached the top. Gravel crunched under the tires as he backed away until the gearshift switched into drive. Then the steady, urbane drone of the car making its way north. I listened until I couldn’t hear it anymore. Like that, my marriage was over. Eight years evaporated with the ease of dissipating sound. 

I was left alone with my Moonlight Jasmine tea from my favorite tea shop. Steam rose from water infused with a jasmine blossom that would surely wilt when the cup emptied. The day before, he had berated me for spending frivolously to “gain approval of the tea shop proprietor.” As he pulled away, I realized that the tea made me happier than the man who lived in my house. If that were true, what was I risking?  When prodded about my decision, my answer would be, “I am more certain of this than of any decision I ever made.” I would even go as far as to say I was compelled. I didn’t consider it a risk but saving my own life. I, like Atreyu, trudged through the Swamp of Sadness. My possibilities, like Artax, drowned in the mire of dreams he slaughtered. His de-escalation of my passion was eerily similar to Morla the Ancient One—“It doesn’t matter.”  My pleas for change were met with indifference; one can’t save a marriage when the other is unwilling. One can’t stay in that marriage either.  

“God, you are so brave,” whispered Audrey through the phone in her hushed lilt—her voice soft and metropolitan juxtaposed to my deep, southern drawl. I shifted my weight from side to side on my parents’ bar stool. My mother pensively watched me from across the grey granite countertop as she warmed up left over chicken and dumplings before placing the Southern comfort food in front of me. I felt the warmth emanate from the shreds of chicken breast and lumps of white dumplings. 

“I guess I am. I don’t know, but I did it and I wanted to tell you. I should probably get some sleep.” 

“Yes, do that. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night.” 

I gently tapped the red “end” button and placed my phone face down on the counter top. I lifted my gaze to my parents standing in front of me. My mother was breathing in and out, glancing at me with pursed lips, unsurprised. A few days before, she showed up at my house unannounced, to tell me she had a bizarre exchange with a woman at the nail salon. 

“She knew too much, Lea. Things that other women shouldn’t know about your marriage.” 

My reaction concerned me more than the news. I didn’t care. Whether there was infidelity or not, I didn’t care. We sat in silence for five minutes. Mom broke the silence, “I couldn’t not tell you. It didn’t set well with me.” She hung her head and cast her eyes downward. 

“I’m glad you told me. It helped me make decisions.” 

“What decisions? What do you mean?

“I don’t know yet. We’ll see.” 

I moved the food around on my plate, then took a bite of dumplings. It tasted like dinner at my grandmother’s table—where four-year-old-me ate my “chickling and dumplings” surrounded by my entire family. It tasted like a time where in which the biggest decision was choosing between The Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, and my true love was my Puffalump.  Age thirty-one was a far cry from then—eating at my parents’ home discussing divorce proceedings and living arrangements. 

“I think it’s time to leave Lonoke.” I said flatly between chews. “There’s nothing for me here. I don’t even like it.” 

My dad agreed, “Where do you want to go? Little Rock?” 

“Yeah. Maybe a small apartment in Hillcrest or SOMA? I’ll be closer to work.” 

“Alright, we’ll go look after church on Sunday. I expect you to go with us, from now on.” 

I didn’t argue with him. The prior summer Nietzsche beach reading didn’t help my ever-present crisis of faith which, in turn, kept me from attending Mass without my parents’ insisting. I never liked church much, anyway.  However, this time was different. I looked forward to attending this Mass even though I was walking in a Catholic Church as a divorcee. It was the ceremony of renewal I needed, and I’d take whatever I could get. 

Too tired to drive home, I decided to stay at my parents’ house that night . My bedroom had changed since I’d lived there 8 years prior; the pink walls were a change made by my mother. I’d have refused to live in a room that color, but instead of being an empty nester, she had the opportunity to decorate everything to her taste. I lay in the dark because I feel more comfortable around darkness; her pink was too perky and promising. Naturally, sleep was difficult. I’d doze off into that comfortable state of secure oblivion—the one where the sleeper isn’t aware of the wrong in his or her life, only to be jolted awake by the panic in my chest.

The night, you see, is when one must face the wrong. The darkness offered no welcome distractions—you must assess the risks to your decisions.  What if…

What if I never find love again. 

What if I’m impossible to love. 

What if I can’t support myself financially? 

What if I one day regret it. 

Regret. 

That’s what makes a risk a risk—regret. Regret is the silent threat to decision making. It’s always there, bubbling under the surface just enough to make itself known. Risk is always intertwined with decision—like a toxic lover of which one can’t quite break free.  

However without risk there is no great reward. My reward outweighed my risk when the fear of possible regret jolted me from my sleep. My mind wondered back to a month prior when I sat in the white wicker rocking chair on the front porch of my house. It was easy to sink back into my balled up body, sitting with my feet planted on the rocker’s edge, my right arm embracing my knees and my left hand holding a half-smoked cigarette. I took drag after drag, choking back the shudder of a crying spell. The tears broke free and rolled down my cheeks. I was crying because I realized that I would be 80 years old, sitting on the same porch, smoking a cigarette (likely with an oxygen tank), watching feral cats roam my front yard. 

The thought of my life being over, with no hope of advancement or adventure, was like experiencing my own death. I had so many plans and places I would go in my life, but he found a reason whether it be financial or a matter of his own personal tastes to stifle it. With him, there were no possibilities anymore and no willingness to make anything happen. He enjoyed telling me “no” and watching my excitement and dreams die. Maybe it made him feel better about his lack of accomplishment. 

But I was no longer in that white wicker chair. Instead, I was lying in the dark, my heart opened to all of the possibilities that would come back to me because of the risk I took.  Regret had no place there. 

 “Of course it would,” I mumbled under my breathe as I blinked back tears. 

Two week later, I found myself in Chicago. Billy Corgan was a few feet away from me spinning vinyl records. I sat, along with a few of my friends, in amazement—not only because he was standing in front of me, but because I was actually IN Madam ZuZu’s Tea Shop—a place that always seemed out of reach. I breathed in the aroma of herbal teas and patchouli incense. The immense black dragon depicted on the chinoiserie wallpaper undulated in a sea of red until it met the black and white tile floor. My hands nervously fidgeted with the fringe of my cut-off shorts I purchased a few days prior from Urban Outfitters. My concentration was broken by the feeling someone had filled the open seat next to me. I turned my head just enough to see in my periphery a large shadow of a person I didn’t know. My focus quickly was back on Corgan and my friend Audrey’s smiling face. The waitress brought me my first, $20 cup of Moonlight Litchi Blossom Tea after which I thanked her spoke a few words to my friend Gaby, who came all the way from Ecuador, about how lovely the taste of my tea was. 

“Where are you from? You sound like home to me,” spoke the shadow from behind me.

I quickly turned to see a tall man with a kind face next to me. Upon further inspection, I noticed many (almost menacing) tattoos on his chest and one circling right before his throat that read Memento Mori. He had large blue eyes encircled with thick chocolate eyelashes, a perfectly proportioned nose pierced through with a silver hoop, and full lips slightly upturned in a pleasant smile. His bronze hair swept over his high forehead and landed right under the nape of his neck. He wore a worn denim jacket emblazoned with buttons from various band and places. Underneath he wore a shirt that read “Sabbath Worship.” He looked like a musician that played in a band that made heavy sounds. 

I’m Lea Ervin. I’m from Arkansas,” I answered back. 

“I knew you were Southern!” he said with a lilt of excitement in his voice, “I’m from Alabama. Roll Tide.” 

With a quick roll of my eyes at the college football reference, I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you. Woo Pig Sooie.” I turned my back and watched for a few minutes more, eventually needing to step outside. The small shop was packed and the air was thick with body heat. I became overwhelmed with not just the crowd or the loud music, but with everything. Making my way down the pristine sidewalk of Roger Williams Avenue, I found a dark corner in which I hid, covertly lighting a cigarette in the dark corner. I turned and pressed my back against the brick wall and slid down until my bottom met the concrete. In two months, my life had gone from stifled and mundane to open and exciting. I was visiting new places, meeting new people, and having experiences. Could the love of my life be in that tea house?

This must be what it’s like to really live. This must be what it’s like to feel alive.  This is what it must be like to fall in love with yourself. I like his face. 

After years of simply going through the motions, that first sense of excitement engulfs the senses, like an electric current. 

 I exhaled smoke, and made room for new possibilities.