just remember, always move fast
more ofic.
“Don’t read in the dark,” you scold, flicking on the light switch when sent by his mother to get him for dinner.
Absently, he reaches from his leg to flick it in the opposite direction with a raised foot, leaving the only source of illumination the dim nightlight half obscured by a bookshelf. “I like it like this. Light’s on the pages, not in my face,” and adding a little later, “so technically, it’s not dark anymore.”
True, you think, not like you could stand the dark anyway.
+++
And no, you swear, just as you swore once before long ago and far away in a land of dream and fairytale, cloudless sky pressed up against your face, clammy hand in yours, gripping tight, sososo tight, screaming without words something like please-don’t-let-go-because-this-is-all-we-have.
No, you swear that you won’t cry now. Not for the memory, not for the loss, not for the loss of the memory or the memory of the loss.
So when he asks you why you’ve been avoiding him and all that nutty cliché crap which makes it sound like the two of you are trying to escape awkwardness like a stupid teenaged couple who had a falling out-because that’s not what this is, that can never be what this is-you want to make sure you don’t react like the classic textbook kid, throwing a question for a question: avoiding? Really? What could you possibly mean by that?
No. You try out that smile one more time, the one you’ve been perfecting in the mirror behind everyone’s back, and by God, it looks like you’ve gotten the hang of it because that look on his face of misplaced concern on has already started shifting into something more collected already.
“Been busy, that’s all. The big play’s staged for next week and Deanna signed me up for stage-crew and all.”
“Ah, those people who dress in black and do everything behind the scenes and don’t get a bit of credit?”
And that’s not a déjà vu, you try to tell yourself. No, no, not at all. “Exactly.”
“Well, try to swing by for dinner sometime, won’t ya? My mom’s been missing you and all.”
“This week’s hell. Maybe after though?” You always were too easy to fool. Too easy for your own damned good.
“Yeah? Good. And mom’s not the only one either,” he adds, turning to go, probably on his way to God knows where since neither of you make the attempt to keep tabs on the other anymore.
And if everyone in this world was to mean everything they said the exact same way the person on the receiving end was to interpret it, well, suffice to say this world would be a completely different place.
So you let it drop, let it fly, let the whole damn deal go on a one-way roadtrip or the like because there’s no use making something out of nothing. And even if there was something to make it out of, there isn’t enough heart left in you to bother with it anymore.
+++
“Why is it,” he’d said once, teeth grit and eyes tired back when everything had been much younger, more stupid while somehow also being less so, “that wanting something bad enough is never quite good enough?”
And you wish that for the life of you, you had an answer, an honest goddamned answer that went beyond the best you could ever give him, the most honest and useless words of I wish I knew.
In a dream, they call the name that’s not really your name, or well, not anymore.
Your eyes open to the ceiling and glow-in-the-dark star stickers are green-white in daylight.
And part of you thinks you should just come to terms with the fact that some things change and don’t go back and that you helped with the process, helped make it irreversible.
+++
“Don’t read in the dark,” you scold, flicking on the light switch when sent by his mother to get him for dinner.
Absently, he reaches from his leg to flick it in the opposite direction with a raised foot, leaving the only source of illumination the dim nightlight half obscured by a bookshelf. “I like it like this. Light’s on the pages, not in my face,” and adding a little later, “so technically, it’s not dark anymore.”
True, you think, not like you could stand the dark anyway.
+++
And no, you swear, just as you swore once before long ago and far away in a land of dream and fairytale, cloudless sky pressed up against your face, clammy hand in yours, gripping tight, sososo tight, screaming without words something like please-don’t-let-go-because-this-is-all-we-have.
No, you swear that you won’t cry now. Not for the memory, not for the loss, not for the loss of the memory or the memory of the loss.
So when he asks you why you’ve been avoiding him and all that nutty cliché crap which makes it sound like the two of you are trying to escape awkwardness like a stupid teenaged couple who had a falling out-because that’s not what this is, that can never be what this is-you want to make sure you don’t react like the classic textbook kid, throwing a question for a question: avoiding? Really? What could you possibly mean by that?
No. You try out that smile one more time, the one you’ve been perfecting in the mirror behind everyone’s back, and by God, it looks like you’ve gotten the hang of it because that look on his face of misplaced concern on has already started shifting into something more collected already.
“Been busy, that’s all. The big play’s staged for next week and Deanna signed me up for stage-crew and all.”
“Ah, those people who dress in black and do everything behind the scenes and don’t get a bit of credit?”
And that’s not a déjà vu, you try to tell yourself. No, no, not at all. “Exactly.”
“Well, try to swing by for dinner sometime, won’t ya? My mom’s been missing you and all.”
“This week’s hell. Maybe after though?” You always were too easy to fool. Too easy for your own damned good.
“Yeah? Good. And mom’s not the only one either,” he adds, turning to go, probably on his way to God knows where since neither of you make the attempt to keep tabs on the other anymore.
And if everyone in this world was to mean everything they said the exact same way the person on the receiving end was to interpret it, well, suffice to say this world would be a completely different place.
So you let it drop, let it fly, let the whole damn deal go on a one-way roadtrip or the like because there’s no use making something out of nothing. And even if there was something to make it out of, there isn’t enough heart left in you to bother with it anymore.
+++
“Why is it,” he’d said once, teeth grit and eyes tired back when everything had been much younger, more stupid while somehow also being less so, “that wanting something bad enough is never quite good enough?”
And you wish that for the life of you, you had an answer, an honest goddamned answer that went beyond the best you could ever give him, the most honest and useless words of I wish I knew.
In a dream, they call the name that’s not really your name, or well, not anymore.
Your eyes open to the ceiling and glow-in-the-dark star stickers are green-white in daylight.
And part of you thinks you should just come to terms with the fact that some things change and don’t go back and that you helped with the process, helped make it irreversible.
+++