I first encountered Despair at Broadly Books, her slim frame angled against the New Age Lit shelf, lips moving silently as she paged through a paperback, and though I noticed her glance at the books I was pulling off the shelf, a fleeting sort of knowing look on her face, I was unfazed by her presence as I brushed past on my way to the register, two self-help books about managing anxiety “the natural way” tucked under my arm, positive they’d help me overcome everything that was holding me back, and upon exiting the shop and tossing the books into my bicycle’s basket, I mounted it, pressing my faded boot against the sidewalk for momentum, and pedaled back toward the apartment I shared with two fellow college graduates.
Despair was front and center the next time I encountered her, seated directly across from me in the hospital waiting room in one of the yellow bucket chairs, no book or phone in hand, her green eyes pointed straight at my husband and me as we cradled our son across both of our laps, limp, feverish, no trace of his stomping leaping brash frog trapping energy, a shell of himself, me working to remain positive as my husband sat crumbling beside me, and as I stroked my boy’s hair wondering when exactly it might be my turn to fall apart, I held Despair’s unblinking stare, her ten slim fingers tapping her knees in succession like running piano scales, finally looking away when a nurse called our son’s name.
For her final appearance, Despair crawled into bed beside me, respectfully avoiding my dead husband’s pillow as I lay staring at a half empty glass of water he’d placed on the bedside table just a few days prior, knowing I’d leave it there until it evaporated one day, disappearing into the ether just like he had, our kids having come home for the services, now back to their own lives, leaving me with a packed fridge—meals I’d eventually scrape into the garbage, an empty house, and a bedfellow who’d finally caught up with me, toward whom I now rolled, opening my arms, letting her curl her limbs around mine, inhaling her neck that smelled of cloves, her left shoulder that smelled of ash, and giving in, I closed my eyes, resigned to what would come, and outside the window, the full moon bathed us in its silken light.