Places We've Never Been

Today, I’m watching the T.V. like a time portal. It ebbs despite the newscast; through my memory. I’m thinking of you and I’m thinking for you.

It’s like this, we never went to the carnival and I never won you a stuffed animal. We never walked in the rain and under trees taller than we could climb comfortably, watching as they caught the water. We never went to see a show we’d never see again, a band we’d never heard of in a place so unfamiliar to us it might as well have been a different realm. We never sat all night and talked, I never read your journal and you never read mine.

You didn’t know everything about me. I let you see what I wanted you to see, the mask I wore was for protection; if you were to know everything at first you would have ran. Each fact was a seed carefully implanted at the start and it would grow to such a size that later when I was more comfortable I would uproot the plant and put the truth in. And you never would have been too upset, because it was for all the right reasons.

It was like we were a thousand miles away, or at least that’s what you tried to make me think you believed. It was something we’d never grasp, us; it was like the sun and we’d be just as scorched if we would have reached. That’s what you made me think, it would never be. But it was close enough, almost too close to be called far; but I ate your slippery explanation like an antidote though it was more like the poison.

I thought it’d be over, when I ended it. You thought so too, I suppose. And here I am, I’m pulling tight the vest and slipping the last button in. With every stroke, there is a nail in your coffin. I’m putting on my best black suit. Today I’m going to bury you.

There are two parts, and the first part is as good as the shovel. You breathe, you see her face, and you exhale. You feel her name slip off the tip of your tongue, where it sat behind every word. You wash your hands, and you scrub deep. When the air is gone, you can’t remember why you’ve been sitting around so much.

The last part is when you get up and walk. You go to the closest beacon, the nearest haven for feeling good. And you never speak about her there again. It’s the safe place now, it’s the place where they don’t know her name and they never will. And it’s going down in you, her. It’s sinking down somewhere deep where the sun doesn’t reach anymore and when it hits the bottom you don’t even hear a sound.

And, I go to switch off the T.V. I go to put on my shoes. Because, you know, it’s all in my head. It’s all everything I want with every breath and every thought; to be purged. And I am trying, I tried. It’s there, the gas tank is full but there are no keys in the ignition.

Instead, I change the channel and the newscasters are saying your name instead of the forecast.