to the untrained eye, everything i write is beautiful.
apple juice sparkling.
the little carbonated bubbles flee like souls from the bottom of the fluted cup to the surface of golden green syruped soda, popping with a crackle so quiet i can only hear it when i take a sip.
i look and see the future.
"did i ever tell you about how i always pretend you are inside my head? my thoughts, they are directed to you as though in conversation. it makes me feel less alone. it makes alone easier to get by," he tells me. his face, gold like the cider, has piano notes written all over it. like gabriel, like an angel.
never enough, what he says is never enough.
"it's like i'm trapped under water. and being with you, being with you is like coming up for a gasp of air. but afterwards i fall harder, deeper, where it's colder, darker."
what happens when you're too far in to come up for air? what happens when you drown?
"i love you."
i want to tell him that i love him, too. but he is just a face in a glass of sparkling apple cider. i say it anyhow, but i don't sound like i mean it. and i don't. (why is it that i don't mean it when i say i love you when i do love you?)
"leave him, leave here, come with me."
too much like a song to be true.
"this is the end of a very long summer."
i take a breath.
the glass slides towards me, beckoned by my cold fingers on the sweating stem (flowers in june, how i adore you so). i'm so close i can hear you sing, i can hear you speak. tip of the nose touch gold. in i go.
lost in a cup of apple juice. so this is the living dead, after all.