Advice to the Lovelorn

by Joe Milosch

Waiting for my wife to complete her MRI, I have no
patience with the book, which I brought to pass the
time. Occasionally, I open it and remove my wife’s
picture that I use as a bookmark. Then, replacing it,
I close the book and look at the receptionist,
who is talking to her sister about her recent breakup.
Hanging up her smart phone, she turns on the TV
and watches her favorite show, Advice to the Lovelorn,
which starts with the host telling us that you should go
to the ocean every chance you get. You should sit
on the sea wall until the sound of the waves,
sliding away from the shore becomes silent,
and your mind becomes as opaque as the sky.
He says that when you can recreate this very
same tranquility in an airport or Laundromat
that you should go to the home of your lover and sit
in front of the fireplace with or without a fire.
Sip a drink so simple you forget you are
drinking it. Sit so close to your lover that your
shoulders touch. But don’t speak. Instead, conjure
the silence of the waves and the opaqueness of the sky,
and breathe steadily until you unearth the realm of the
horizon, the space to begin. Of course, this is the way
we want our life and our love to continue.
I think about 30 years of marriage, its beginnings
and then I think about our Colorado, river rafting trip,
and how we slept on the beaches.
I remember that one morning the river sparkled
as she swam, just before we broke camp.
As she walks out of that examining room with its
sterilized table, she rests on her cane, and looking at me,
she smiles. I stand, thinking this is what I want
even more than the health of our youth, and that ride
through the rapids, it’s this–this delight in her infinite eyes.