That night, we drove in silence. I swear I couldn’t write about it before; the entire way to the funeral, I was shaking and planning exit strategies before we even found the highway. With my hands neatly folded in my lap, I felt like a child, my wide eyes peering over the dashboard in some kind of suspended disbelief. There was no way you were really driving my car to say our final goodbyes to someone with the sun in her eyes and gold in her heart. I didn’t believe it; you couldn’t believe me, my teeth chattering together like a sick girl’s symphony. If you would have reached out to touch me, I would have melted beneath the imprint of your fingertips. I’m a soft snow bank melting – transient, beautiful while it lasts and so quickly does it get dirty.
On the way home, you circled the Chipotle parking lot and slammed on the breaks. Eased into a spot and shut the headlights off. Aimlessly, I stared out of the window at everyone, lined up like cattle – the line twisted around the building, frat shirts and baseball caps all warming against September chill. I swallowed a scream. You looked at my profile in the darkness, perhaps searching for part of the girl you knew existed within me once. She was hiding from you, afraid to stain your palms. She is still messy, nothing but a smear of paint across your chest.
That night, the apartment was so silent I could hear my own breathing – rise and fall, each time the bedsprings groaned underneath my weight. I heard tree branches dance outside; leaves rustled on the back porch, through the parking lot, beneath my car’s tires. Somewhere distant, thunder rolled in. The only thing absent was the sound of someone else humming themselves to sleep – you.
We died at a funeral. We died the second I screamed as you merged into another lane, and you slammed onto my breaks again, palms sweaty, and snapped. Your voice cracked like a whip. “What? What is it? Jesus, what IS it?”
It’s nothing, and everything. It is the inevitability of endings; every sentence comes to a final close. Every train sighs into its last station. Every inhale accompanies an exhale. And for you and I, we were merely another collection of words and pleas – each more desperately pleading than the last to please stay, don’t leave just yet, don’t –
germansingergirl
origamiaround
pixelskylines
amandla
prguitarman
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
turnnoffyourmind
