boys & flowers

gardenia (family)

“A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.”
-Gail Hightower, A Light in August.
Faulkner.
…

I’ve spent many nights up in the kitchen, washing the same blue and green triangle plate over and over, feeling the indents from chipping over the years. Many mornings on my knees in the garden before the frost took over, and days in my room staring at the window wondering why.

Why was the timing so horrifyingly perfect? Why, in that split second of channel surfing, did I have to come face-to-face with my nightmare mistakes on a silver screen with all my friends present so they could see it too? Was it tantamount to God that at this point he’d divide my summer into two halves, the latter being one where my realities shifted and suddenly I was no longer a Person with Problems who was at least on the right path but someone whose whole mental state eclipsed into the dark green grasp of an emotional venus fly trap?

I’ll never have the answers to these. I shouldn’t bother asking.

I found it online about four months later, after all of this was behind me (but not really) and watched the clip by myself. They added a rapidly spinning tire swing as the camera widened out from the tree we crashed into.
…

Though I could not see his face, I could imagine his face when I ripped myself away from Craig. Based on all the faces I’ve seen him make, I can make a mental collage of furrowed eyebrows, wet and wide eyes, expanded nostrils, and his mouth either frowning or bitten down on. But they all convey the same things: hurt. Concern.

I should have been responsible and ended things after that. Should have told him, truly, not to bother with me. Please find someone normal to date. I feel selfish for wanting to cling to him more. I could have done the kind thing and let him

gave him

talked to him

give him a choice

But if the roles were reversed, I would have done the same as him and stayed. Because I loved him so much, I would have stayed.

There’s only so much a person can give before they are spent - burned up - turned up by their roots.

After seeing the crash again, I was there once more. Struggling to breathe, bleeding to death. How could he know if he were to put his arms around me I’d once more feel crushed, wanting and waiting to die? I wanted to believe him when he said he didn’t blame me. I asked him to forgive me for pushing him away. He said there was nothing to forgive. That it wasn’t even a big deal. I let him touch me plenty.

I was chipping away at him without meaning to.
…

We were in Wendy and Stan’s bathroom for an hour. I spent the first five minutes upchucking that night’s sushi (at least the eel returned to the ocean in some form). I sat on the toilet, hand over my mouth, tasting my sickness over and over. Craig perched on the side of the tub. I stared at his knees.

I didn’t want to move. He didn’t make me. He kept repeating that I would be OKAY. For several minutes we were together in this tiny room meant for expelling waste and becoming clean, skirting on the edge of space, and if any any time we opened the door we’d look out into blackness.
Looking at Craig’s bruised, bony knees, I wondered for the 500th time if, in Clyde’s last moments, he thought I would die too. Would he have taken comfort in knowing that someone was going with him?
No. I remember his face. It haunts me all the time.

I’ve wondered if he had any sense that he was dying. If he knew we had opened Earth’s door, our bodies about to land onto stars, but he would be the one to fall.

My mother played Billie Holiday for her mother as she drifted into death-sleep. All Clyde got was our intertwined heavy breathing. Oil spilling into grass. Static. Then nothing.
I’ll never know what he thought or didn’t think.