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You You are still a whisper on my lips A feeling at my fingertips That's pulling at my skin I looked out the car window and saw the car you used to drive. I say "used to" because I don't know if you still drive it, or even if you drive at all. I don't even know where you are, how you wear your hair, what you dress like, when you go to bed. But I used to. I almost hit the truck in front of me thinking about this. Truth is, I was trying to sneak a peak through the passenger side window, not realizing the traffic ahead of me. When I finally noticed that the traffic was not moving, I broke hard, temporarily knocking me out of my daze. Feeling as if I'd been cursed Bitter cold within It was Fall when the proverbial shit hit the fan. The Winter that followed was the longest of my life: the silence was a vacuum, and in the vacuum it was cold: absolute zero. And while the weather outside warmed during the Spring, my heart was decidedly intent on staying completely frozen until your warm breath helped to create a sound--any sound--to melt it and bring it back to life. I pulled onto the highway and cut maybe-your car off as I merged onto 280. Maybe-you followed me so I sped up as I opened my windows and cranked up the volume, as if to say, "See? I'm fine!" when I was so obviously not. A buzz spread throughout my body, like what happens after I smoke a cigarette, after the agonistic effect of the nicotine on my acetylcholine receptors kick in, and immediately felt calm. The highway melted into a string of radiant jewels--diamonds, rubies, yellow tourmaline, and the occasional glowing emerald thrown in for good measure--meandering over the smooth road, oddly reminiscent of the smoothness of you unchiseled almond milk tea-colored body, and I was heading south. The geography there is lost on me, but I think--or maybe I feel--it might be home. Days when I couldn't live my life without you Every winter and summer, I return from Southern California to what my records at school call my "permanent address." Every time I make the journey north, I always play a game of What If. What If I run into you? What would I say? Is there anything left to say? A feeling at my fingertips That's pulling at my skin Maybe I need some sort of closure. Once and for all. Over coffee. Or over beer. I need to be able to look back and laugh at myself, instead of crying over a situation that I cannot change. I need to accept defeat. I need to be able to somehow stop that itching beneath the surface of the skin of my back that no amount of scratching with a bamboo hand-shaped back scratcher will quell. I need some Benadryl. I need to be able to look at your topaz eyes and not see the ocean over the equator at sunset in the eye of a hurricane. I need traffic and stop signs and souvlaki vendors yelling in broken English and garbage in alleys and war vets on street corners and snowstorms and heatwaves and the occasional mass murderer. And I need to deal with them without retreating to an idealized world contained within the irises of your eyes. Feeling as if I'd been cursed Bitter cold within I brought it upon myself, thinking this way. Something in the every cell of my body resonates when I think of you. Muscle memory's cruel second cousin. The left turn signal had just turned green. How a green arrow can look like a green circle, I'll never understand, but apparently, someone thought it did. As I turned left onto McLaughlin from Tully, that person almost plowed right into the passenger side of my car. Your eyes can play tricks on you, can make you see what you want to see. And depending on what you see, you feel something. Something that tells you press harder on the pedal, something that tells you to swerve out of the way, something that tells you to laugh, to cry, to crack a smile, or to crack a skull. Days when I couldn't live my life without you I looked out the car window and saw the car you used to drive. |