Mess You Made

1.

ONE YEAR LATER.

Miguel Hernandez.

Inevitably, people wonder what will be said about them when they die.

Fuck. That sounds miserable as shit. I don't much like sad things or shitty things or thinking about them but for now, it's where my mind's chosen to venture to. So I'll allow it, I suppose.

Nothing really becomes of you once death comes except the intangible things — memories. Jesus, fuck, that sounds deep — but just, hear me out for a second, I swear I'm not an emo fuck.

Memories are intangible. We can't touch them. We can't run our fingertips over them unless we capture them in a photograph or something. Even then, that's just a physical way of trying to replicate a memory, or a semblance of it. We can't hold memories, we don't even really understand what they are and I don't like that even the memories I do have, I've always seen them through a shroud. A misty sort of haze.

I'm not exactly sure which ones are constructs of my imagination, or which ones are real. The ones I really want to remember, I was too young. Each one feels blurred, distant, now shadowed as I've grown up.

I keep spinning the basketball set on my thigh, fingers splayed out on the top of it to get a good turn. A light breeze coasts past me, making the ends of my hair flutter over my forehead. Sitting comfortably on this bench — not comfortable though, the wood might splinter my ass, which would be an epic fucking shame — this ass is model-like.

Not sure if ass modelling exists but before my thoughts are about to spiral about modelling of the ass genre, like I feel like they might, I tuck that thought away because I realise it's an inappropriate one. Not the right time, I'll google it later.

My mind's comfortable, I guess, even if my ass isn't. A bit morbid, yeah, because I'm sat around a shit ton of graves. Dead people, everywhere. Skeletons and souls and all of that.

Peaceful, though. Not because I find some philosophical belonging with all the souls or anything. It's quiet. Still. Placid. And I promised her I'd come see her so I do.

I used to talk to her aloud, though, I think I just grew to like sitting in the quiet.

I roll the ball between my palms mindlessly, my eyes flicking to her headstone. It was recently cleaned since I have the edges of it, each crack and curve memorised. Where the stone is beginning to wear and where it hasn't yet. I'm able to notice a new crack every time there is one. There are nine major cracks now and those previous four have deepened, crawling towards her name as if reaching for her.

I kick my shoes against the gravel, rest my back against the bench. I just feel obliged sometimes to come sit with her, even if it's to do fuck all. I'd imagine it to be the way you force yourself out of your room sometimes, go down to your mother in your living room and sit there for a while for no reason except she's your mom. Her presence is one you crave sometimes. I'm just doing that — obviously, a bit more sad and shit, but the same. Sitting with her.

And I'm especially doing it with her today because I've fucked up.

I blow out a long breath and drop my head a bit, allow my hand to run over the back of my neck.

Mama used to say my bones are made of trouble. She'd say it in an affectionate way. She couldn't leave me to my own devices when I was a toddler. A glance away and I'd be running out onto the road outside of our house, climbing a fence, breaking an arm or something.

There's an urge sometimes, to fall into impulsivity or get a kick out of doing something I'm not supposed to. When you're little, it's cute. She doted on it.