You wanted to be left at sea.

So I left you at sea.

I pushed your body over the edge of the boat and it fell. It fell bringing with it your smile and your regrets and your love of the grey Seattle skies and your green eyes and your brown soft curly hair thick as a forest and your sadnesses. Your many sadnesses. My life vest pulled me forward. I held the cold sea-worn rail and raised my leg to follow you into the black-adjacent and joyless abyss. But the hand of your ghost stayed me. Touching my chest and calming my breath as tears lept away and away.

I drank the sad sea air and memorized the sad song of the waves as they together pushed my small boat further and further. I watched as Poseidon wreathed you in scales, sheathing your body within prisms of purples and peonies and dusk. A current of small fish, keeping you safe, walked with you down and down. Undrowning and happy, your face looked towards me and your eyes opened.

As the dark water leeched your pale glow, I slit my wrists with a broken bottle of wine, from the pulse at the base of my thumb to the crook of my arm where once you rested, and let my red blood feed the blue grave. All in hopes that you might feel me near, even if you couldn't feel anything at all. All in hopes that I might feel something, in fear that I might never feel again.

I'll find you in the next life.

No you won't.

You're at the bottom of the ocean.

I pushed the shopping cart between the aisles and found myself standing in front of your favorite snacks. I do not want these I said to myself as I placed them carefully down. I leaned my body against the handle and felt your hand on my back as it would have been, as it should have been.

Sparkling water you adored, dried fruits and raw nuts you couldn't ignore, all that which adorned the mesh. The silk of you air kissed my neck, and I escaped the grocery store with my basket of sadness and memories of you.

But I forgot paper towels.

Passing through the parking lot, the shopping cart was where I had left it. Sitting solitary and patient under a softly blinking amber light. I took hold of it once more and, having no direction of my own, let it guide me.

For some time each month, I took a small boat out to the coordinates of your grave. I anchored myself to the hopes that you might still swim only to drown in the false remedy of wine-parched sunburntedness. Months and months went by and the scar on my arm still throbbed hotter and harder where I stained the sea. I brought for you news of the physical plane, songs, and what small romance I experienced without you. I'd bring coffeee, pour some into the mouth of the world, and recite spells I learned from the back of my hand where your warmth once read my thoughts. I began to hunt, bringing enough supplies to catch sharks, to sate Scylla, knowing you could very well be her. An infinite being of many heads, teeth sharp as jutting rocks, whose bite is filled with the lost miasma of love. My small line taut with small nibbles, vibrations of your heavenly call.

I once caught a fish with a finger in its mouth. I cried endlessly for many days.

The only time I left our apartment was to buy snacks I didn't eat and feminine products I didn't need. And each time I would find the same shopping cart under the same light as if it were waiting for me. And I would walk around the store searching for nothing, wanting of everything.

Soon enough sadness spared me. And I missed you more in a different way. The happier I became, the more I longed for you to share it with. I started eating your snacks because you wouldn't want them to go to waste and I smiled in thinking of you. I used your period pads as coasters for my iced coffees and out of curiosity I even wore a few of them; my sense of humor returned and with it I began to hear your laughter. A treasure and habit I thought flew me, returning to the chorus of angels. In my dreams, I saw still your face looking up at me from the deep. your eyes, once blue-green-grey like the ocean now empty like the ocean, but a voice escaped from the corpse as jellyfish took to you for puppet. Their transparent tendrils wrapped your decayed arms around my echoed heart, your voice the whisper from a brass instrument hollowed by unwritten memories. The phosphorescent glow of their fibers igniting our shallow dimension, your body as it flowed between currents, my mortal form panicked to swim apace. It was here you remained with me, and it was here too you longed for leave.

Life wasn't good enough for you. We both knew it. Life took you for granted, all your magic and talent. Life grew you from crumbs and scraps but still you fought back and grew and bled and screamed and cried and laughed and grew and grew. You triumphed, aligned from alchemical science and the silence of an island's sun setting. Never us both forgetting: you deserve something more; a pale phantom in a turquoise dream was not.

That night she came with me to buy groceries. I bragged for her about my Alfredo sauce and home-made noodles. Her not blue-green-grey eyes glistened, her not-pale skin faltered with blush. Through the aisles her and I walked, where once we waltzed, and she felt a cold breath on her shoulders as if life itself was being drained from her; I hoped for her it was my imagination. Walking towards the exit of the store a shopping cart ran into her leg. After pasta and your garlic bread from your garlic bread recipe and wine and soulful music, I kissed the purple carnation bruise on her tanned thigh and thought of you.

For months the bruise stayed with us. For months, night after night, I kissed it. I held her close, I cooked for her, brought her food during her lunch break and stayed with her and she found laughter and smiles, walked her dog, made her coffee in the mornings, danced with her in the night; all of this accomplished so long as before we slept I could kiss her bruise.

I pushed myself through her skin, between the feuilletage of her muscles and fat, and steeped myself into memories of you.

Where her fingers touched my ears was your voice. Where I bathed in the curtain of her hair was your breath wafting over me. A small moment she never gave a second thought contained a millennia of you. Her bruise shaped like your lips. Her blood and her pain my trophy and joy. Her bruise that was cold as the ocean floor.

And when your bruise left her life -- I followed.

"Who are you?"

The shopping cart was motionless. As it should be. I looked at my reflection in the car window and there you stood. I blinked and there still were you. My hand crashed through the glass and fragments of your lost smile filled the pieces of broken pane on the ground. My arm bled onto my clothing, my scar made something more, and I held my pulse tight at the artery. Taking hold of the cart's handle, it pulled me.

Canned food.

"First aid. I'm bleeding."

The cart was motionless. As it should be. I looked up.

"Aisle 13."

It pulled.

Frozen foods and ice creams. Paper towels, other toiletries. Vegetables, fresh fruit.

13, 09, 19, 01.

"Misa?"

You pulled me towards the bandages. In the middle of the store I opened a pack of gauze and wiped the tears from my cheeks and neck. You moved your plastic body close to me, leaning against my thigh. "I'm fine. Thank you." I rested my palm on your handle and felt your warmth. "What's going on, Misa? Why are you-"

You walked away and I followed.

You took me to some pens and I wrote down each letter.

You look like shit.

"Fuck you. I haven't missed you at all."

You smell terrible.

"It's been two years and this is the first thing you say to me? Look at you. You're a fucking shopping cart."

It's been two years and not once have you washed your ass.

"I'm going to disassemble you and sell you for scraps."

Fuck you!

"Fuck you!"

Security pulled me out of the store as I laughed.

Stop crying into the ocean. There's enough pollution as is.

"I have to visit you."

My bones are in the water. My soul is here.

"For how long?"

I don't know. I'm a shopping cart not a necromancer. Did you fuck my corpse like I asked you to?

"Fuck you. Fuck no."

That's why I'm a shopping cart. Because you didn't fuck my dead body as I wished on my deathbed, asshole. Imagine dying of a rare cancer and your boyfriend can't even answer your final request. You cursed me to this small existence. I'm a heap of plastic with plastic wheels and it's all because of your plastic heart. It's actually not too bad. I'm a shopping cart so I can't be depressed. And I don't have to listen to your stupid voice all day long anymore or see your stupid face. I hate your face and your voice.

"I don't miss you at all. I'm glad you're a shopping cart. It suits you better. I don't miss your ugly Pixar feet and hands or your stupid fibromy-fucking-algia."

Fuck you. I was a cat for a few months but I got killed. Actually, I think it was you that ran me over. Look at you, causing me pain between my many existences. Good job. Job well done, asshole.

"I finally got revenge on you for all those nights you made me laugh and smile. You know how much I hate laughing and smiling. I hate being happy with you almost as much as I hate you."

Hey. I'm a shopping cart but I still have feelings.

"Do you really?"

Actually, yeah. It's weird. It's different from being human. As long as someone gets their groceries with me, I'm happy. During the nights, when the store is closed, time just is. Nothing else exists. There are no thoughts to have, no dreams to forget, no sadness that keeps me awake, no ugly boyfriend to kiss me when I ask. I'm just a shopping cart. It's not any more simple or complex than that.

Save for any thoughts I have of you.

"Stop thinking about me."

Okay.

"Good."

Who are you again?

"I hate you so much."

Help, somebody help. There's a weird guy touching me.

"Fuck you."

Fuck you. You're arguing with a shopping cart, you freak. Look at you, writing numbers on your dry palm and wiping them as I finish each sentence. You look insane. People are staring at you, you know. The workers gossip about you when you leave at night. They think you stink. They can smell your ass. How can you even prove it's my soul in this shopping cart.

"Because you're obsessed with me in this life just as you were in the last. And you have the same grammar. The same shitty grammar.

The grammar of a failed poet."

Kill yourself. Kill yourself and join me in the afterlife so I can kill you here. I'm obsessed with my hatred for you. That's different. That's what keeps me tied to this dimension. I couldn't go to heaven because I wasn't able to let you know how much I hated our time together.

Come back tomorrow, I have something to tell you.

"No."

Okay. Goodbye, fuck you. Don't sleep well.

"See you never."

Shut up. Choke and die in your sleep.

"I hate you."

I hate you more.

Steal me.

"What."

Take me home.

"Take you home."

I want to see our apartment. And I want to see you naked.

Security chased me. I could hear your laughter in my ears and on my skin as we ran.

At our home I bathed your plastic body. I wiped down your wheels with a warm towel while your favorite songs played. I felt with my fingers the scratches and scars along your handrails; the immortal signpost of pain against your skin; the mishandling of something precious. I kissed them with as much tenderness as I could create and cried while doing so. Along your many scars I took sandpaper to. With the quick motion of instinct, the coarse fabric smoothed the canyons of your past. Slowly they faded, soonly they were polished. I sang to you while you walked yourself around and I cooked myself dinner while you watched and slammed yourself into things for no apparent reason. Just to watch me suffer in laughter. Our small calico jumped into your basket and fell asleep. And I laughed and sighed and cried into the silent haunting air.

Pressing my hands into the wooden board, the magnifying glass danced with the letters and I heard you whisper into my soul.

Just kidding. I'm not Misa. I'm a demon pretending to be her.

I felt you sitting next to me. Your hand braced over mine. Your smile as you leaned into me. Your weight was in my lap, your hair in my mouth, your breath mixing with mine creating smoke and flames forged into your face and frame.

"She was a demon anyways. Nice to meet you, demon. You're much nicer than she ever was. Be welcome, be merry."

Fuck you!

"Fuck you!"

Thank you.

"Thank you."

For tonight. For loving me all this time.

"I have no other options. I will never not."

Am I holding you hostage?

"Something like that."

Your laughter echoed off our walls, bouncing between the guard you laid to rest long ago.

I love you, human man.

"I love you, plastic shopping cart woman."

You asked of me two things.

I held your body close in our bed, your form making cavern of our sheets. The sleet and ice of your death withering away as I held tightly your ghost. Your plastic melted like snow in my hands, a warmth extending beyond life. Each turn of your wheels a chasm through time, a fasting of forward, the stopping of all within our singularity. Your mesh and mine, the threads of all love existing without rhyme or reason. The single breath of flesh and plastic a treason against science, when love becomes more than magic. My fingers and your holes, all five hundred of them, as I pressed myself through your sieve and found myself on the other side made whole once more. And more is all you asked for, and I made it my duty to give that which you bade. It was the sweat in my eye and the warm dripping down my thigh that brought me back where I did not want to be. Back to the dark confines of a room, back to the silence of a world deemed real, back to the air and conditioned comfort of a warm existence without your magic.

I wished to be more, I longed to be plastic.

In the morning, slowly we waltzed between heaps of scraps and metals. I felt again an urge to run away. Not with you in my arms, but instead from the embrace of this life.

Together we looked over the compactor. I placed you carefully inside, I kissed your handle, your hand and surface made smooth, and climbed myself to safety. The sound of your body being crushed. This is now the second time you departed me; taking with you the world we made in tandem.

I wondered where you might be next and casted only that you would seek happiness. There was no desire in me to follow you now.

"What did you do with our shopping cart?"

The security guard looked at me confused with my bottle of cheap wine.

"Fucked it then threw it away."

You would have loved to hear that.