"Pull the Rug Out"
Turn the pictures over
Maybe he's behind one of them
Turn them all over
I want to see the hooks
The hooks in the walls
Maybe he's hanging from them
Like a little demon
GERALD!
GERALD, I KNOW YOU'RE IN HERE!
I KNOW IT!
I can feel it
I can feel him here
He left three years ago
Three years
And I can still feel him
And it's because I didn't send his things
I should have sent his things
When he left
I should have rid this house of him
From top to bottom
But I thought I was lucky
Lucky
Can you believe it?
Lucky that I got to keep all this
All this junk
This high-priced junk
That still carries him
Inside of all of it
I'm not talking about a ghost
He's not dead
I wish he was
But he's not
He's in the Bahamas
The Carribbean
Who knows where
With some woman
Maybe
I never cared to ask
But wherever he went
He didn't want to take any of his stuff with him
But I should have got rid of it
I know that
I know that now
But it's not too late
I can still get rid of him
Take out all the drawers
Empty them on the floor
Anything that's not mine
Throw it in the trash
I don't care if it's nice
I don't care if it's pretty
I don't care if it's wrapped
In one hundred dollar bills
Get rid of it
All of it
He didn't say a word to me
Not a word
Just left
One day I came home
And he was gone
I found his journal
So I know why left
As best I can know
But it doesn't make sense
It still doesn't make sense to me
It never will
I don't think it ever will
Rip the sheets off the bed
Those were his
The pillows were his
The blankets are mine
But they can go too
He slept underneath them
So they might as well have been his
I cried, you know
I did my time
I grieved sufficiently
I'm sure of that
I didn't see friends
I didn't answer calls
I locked myself away
For an entire year
And then I emerged
And I'm not going back again
I'm not diving back into that pain
No matter how much these things
Try to pull me down into him
Back into what that was like
When he left
And I'm not talking about
When I came home
And he was gone
I'm talking about when he was here
And not talking
And not caring
About anything
Especially and including me
Pull the rug out
Pull it out from underneath me
Go ahead
I'll just jump
When you do
I've done it before
I don't have time to move
Just yank it right out
So I know I can still make it
So I know I can feel it go
And still be left standing
I walked by this rug the other day
And I realized
That if he was willing to leave this
This rug that belonged to his mother
That he loved so much
That got cleaned regularly
Even when the car looked like an anthill
If he was willing to leave this
Then...
He must have really hated it here
He must have been so unhappy
And why didn't I see that?
Why wasn't I aware?
What did I miss?
. . . . .
I walked by this rug
And all of a sudden
It rushed into me
That pressure
Like I was back in that moment
Alone
It's something you never get used to
When you've been with someone
And then you're alone
That feeling of loneliness
That state of being
You don't live in it
You run into it
Every once in awhile
In your hallway
In your bedroom
In your kitchen
It's an unfriendly roommate
Who moved in
After your husband moved out
And you forget it's there sometimes
You think it's gone
But it's never gone
It doesn't leave
And you look at that rug
That you never liked
That you've been keeping
Because you thought it meant
He was going to come back
He would come back for it
Wouldn't he?
It doesn't occur to you
Until the ninetieth time you see it
After he's left
What it really means
What it really stands for
That he was willing to leave it
He was willing to leave you
He was willing
And now he's happy
How do you reconcile that?
Pull the rug out
Get it out of here
It's his rug
And he doesn't live here anymore
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