Big Foot

From what I've been told, he often walked the length of Prospect Park with machete in hand. My husband a glorious free spirit filled with painful memories of abuse, remanded to a 72 hour lock down. By me. Our marriage young, tender finding it's way began fraying at the edges as reality escaped his grasp and horror became a constant companion.

Rumor had it.. he lived in the park and would enter our apartment while I was away at work or school. I circled back one day to find him at the kitchen stove, a mangy apparition, unrecognizable. I quickly called his brothers and they physically cornered my lovely Sasquatch and spirited him to the hospital. Locked behind glass doors, strapped to a gurney, he said he heard voices telling him to kill - me. Three days not enough time for a healing. Doctors released him two weeks later with various hand-made leather accessories, a pot belly, slurred speech and a shitload of toxic prescriptions. A cocktail of Lithium, Thorazine and various mind altering medications his only sustenance.

I wiped his brow and held him closely as he trembled through the night the descent into madness complete. Went to therapy with him religiously, while his doctor, an old-world misogynist harangued me about wearing pants, attending college and breathing while female. Our relationship once precious now defiled. Crippled by side-eye glances, fanatic interlopers, daily terror and unrelenting dread - it collapsed (as did I) under the weight of his mental illness.

Retrieving my dignity and spirit, I placed hope in a jar as the final credits rolled on what remained of my innocence. This like other scenes from our wedlock, a grainy sepia-toned mess, filed, ripped and tossed aside onto the tree-lined streets of old Park Slope.

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