I've published a few of my stories, but for the most part I don't have many short enough to post here. So I figured I'd dig deep back into my files and grab my one short story.
It starts off with a letter then the main plot begins. It seems that most people just read the FF fan fic here, but hopefully somebody will give this one a shot as well.
My dearest Amber,
I could not sleep last night because I know that it is over between us. There is no drink powerful enough to quell my exquisite inner pain.
The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we've lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we've found each other. And maybe each time, we've been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.
When I look at you, I see your beauty and grace and know they have grown stronger with every life you have lived. And I know I have spent every life before this one searching for you. Not someone like you, but you, for your soul and mine must always come together. And then, for a reason neither of us understands, we've been forced to say goodbye.
I would love to tell you that everything will work out for us, and I promise to do all I can to make sure it does. But if we never meet again and this is truly goodbye, I know we will see each other again in another life. We will find each other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love each other in that time, but for all the times we've had before.
And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summers beneath the stars, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. May the wind always be at your back, and the sun upon your face, and the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.
Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we did, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared into my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it. Every now and then, I wish it was then instead of now. But still ,sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing, I can close my eyes and just for a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time hangs in the air like fireflies in a mid summer nights sky, your memories hang before me; lit like a star hanging in my moonless night soul.
Lets not say goodbye. Lets just say, I love you,
Royce
With an echoing shut of my truck door, the sound rang off into the distant morning. I remember inhaling the cold dewy morning air. I was young and naive back then. I stood tall, lanky, and looked a little older than I was. My hair was a little long, probably to long.
Well, as I was saying, I was young and so was the day. I had worn an old, faded, dark blue, corduroy suit jacket over a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans and square-toed boots.
I softly stepped onto her lawn, the cold wet frosted-grass crunched beneath my feet.
I stood staring up at her house which was filled with phantom memories of a childhood long deceased. The lingering sound of laughter, giggles, and kisses haunted the lawn….
It was early, the windows of the cars in her driveway were fogged with dew and there were water drops forming on the handlebars of her brother's tricycle. Her house, a white two-story colonel, similar to the houses lining both sides of the street, was framed by a gray sky.
I made my way to her front steps and before I could knock Amber swung open the door and stepped out. Slowly she shut the door behind her but still hadn't made eye contact with me. There was almost nothing to say. I was trying to look her in the eye to gain confidence, but she wouldn't look at me. She stared off into the distance and occasionally glanced over at my truck.
A frown conquered my lips. "I'll…I'll be leaving tonight…" the words were stone cold to my heart. All blood flow had stopped, neither bird nor cricket made a sound. Not even the wind dared interrupt us. "I haven't spoken with my parents. I plan on calling them from the road."
Silence fell once more. It's kinda funny, at the time it seemed like there was nothing to say. But now that I look back… there was a million…
Amber reached out to touch my shoulder then pulled herself back. She lowered her head and softly sighed.
"Sorry…" I softly whispered. I took her in my arms and whispered it over and over. A robin flew overhead making late haste south. Amber stepped back and stared me in the eyes. The wind gently started back up; blowing her hair every now and then. Her arms were crossed, as if she were cold. A light breeze blew strands of her rich brown hair into her face. She uncrossed her arms and softly brushed the hair back behind her ear. She was slender, willowy, and very beautiful. She wore a lot of jewelry; earrings, necklaces and rings. Her cloths were newer and more fashionable then mine. She was very much a part of this neighborhood with its pools and manicured lawns.
"I…I'm sorry; I don't remember the address by heart." I was kicking at small stones and an imaginary bump at the edge of her steps. "I'll call you to let you know…"
The day was quite as a grave, and for a second a crazy calm swept over us before the wind rises electric. She shivered in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree. Her usual beauty, as clear and deep as a reflection of eternity, was now shattered by terror, crazed by sharp lines of an anguish that was close to grief. She was held together only by desperate hope. I could hardly bear the sight of her in such pain. It was then I felt something fierce within my stomach. I took her close one last time, her perfume a sweet promise that brings tears to my eyes. She's soft and warm and almost weightless in my arms. I whisper one last time in her ear.
"I'll always love you."
She hugs me harder and sends shivers down my spine as she whispers back.
"Always and never."
I walked back down the path to my truck. Amber shouted something, I couldn’t quite make out over the racket of a passing motorcycle, I let it melt with the wind. I sat down in my truck, started it up and dwindled down the road.
I had been traveling for hours. It was about 3:00 AM and my truck was doing 65 on this straight as a preacher highway, somewhere in the middle of Ohio. The road had recently been resurfaced and the lane markings hadn't yet been repainted. There were no streetlights, no signs of people, no towns off in the distance, nothing but a deep tar like blackness that my weak, yellowish headlights were just barely penetrating. Oh, yeah, and it was snowing. Crazy ghost sheets of swirling snow dancing across the road, not really sticking to anything but wrapping around the headlight beams and creating the illusion that I was traveling through a dark funhouse tunnel.
After awhile my legs begun to cramp, besides I was tired as piss. When I came upon the next truck stop I pulled in to catch some rest. For a while I just sat there, radio on, watching as snow started to dust on the hood of my truck. I must have turned the truck off around four and fell asleep. I fell into a dream; dreams in which the past still hunts me.
It was the end of first semester in tenth grade. I had chased Amber with notes in the halls, nervous conversations by her locker, walks home, countless Cokes, jokes and after Friday night football games French fries at Franco's. Saturday afternoons we went to the movies and sat in the balcony laughing and making fun of the people on the screen and occasionally tossing popcorn at people we knew sitting in the lower level. Later, sitting with our backs up against a tombstone in the Sacred Heart Cemetery behind the trees, I'd smoke cigarettes and like a soothsayer reading the stars, tell her future. She was going to be a great writer, a great singer, and a great painter. I was as sure of those things as I was the one day I wasn't chasing her anymore. She had stopped running without me even noticing. Now, after Francos, instead of friends on a walk home, there were awkward kisses and parties in the basements of friends whose parent's were out or just to tired to care what we did. And a funny thing happened to the city. It seemed to have changed overnight. I noticed houses, trees, colors, shapes and smells that had always been there, but of whose existence I was somehow just now becoming aware. And I loved it all; the park, the lights downtown, even the boarded up apartment buildings. We found secret places; the loading dock in the ally behind Rex-All Drugs, the garage behind old lady Daulton's house were like swift rides through tunnels, kisses that would stop the world and time and leave me breathless, bright eyed and grinning like a madman. I wrote her poems and stories and explained them all in great length, pointing out the significance of each line. She listened to me, eyes bright, nodding and encouraging; then gave me poems in return. Poems that made mine seem like drivel, poems that read like four part harmonies to what I was feeling. She made the streetlights shine like stars and after leaving her each night I would run home, effortlessly, smiling into the darkness.
Its funny how whatever you're going through, you're sure it will last forever… It's like that Dylan lyric, "She's everything I need in love, but I can't be fooled by that." I just didn't want to believe in that Romeo & Juliet bull; after all, look what happened to them.
It had always been my life long dream to move south, where the sun shines all year round, and I'd never have to be burdened with the cold snow that would frost my veins and send me into bitter still winters. Where the voices of forgotten people are just shadows, flickering palely in my mind. I was a fool though; to think a girl like that would follow me to any corner of the world and listen to my every whim. She was a small town girl, loved the country and never wanted to leave her childhood memories. She wanted to raise a family, a family in which would have the same good childhood experiences she had. She wanted to live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich. To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart. To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, and hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. In other words, she lived her life in a way Robert Browning once quoted it to be, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Not I though, I wanted to see the world, travel and do this and that… I always dreamed that my future had something special in store for it. I had desires to go elsewhere and not end up mentally dead; a 'townie,' dreamless, broken, and old before my time.
I guess the only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty.
The sun awoke, rising red off the horizon, like the all mighty phoenix rising out the dark ashes of night. Red and orange painted the trees making even this old dirty truck stop look like a place in which God would vacation. The snow had already melted but the streets were still wet. Now that it was light out, I got a chance scrutinize the place. "EAT HERE," was the extent of the tarnished sign that loomed over the truck stop.
I went to the restroom, my stomach was hurting. I had to take a shit… It was one of those shits that pains you so bad that it brings a tear to your eye. Then when it's finally done you only drop a pebble, and your thinking, "What the hell!?" Then you get pissed and before you know it you're yelling at your own shit.
Well anyway, I go in and man it stunk so bad in there I nearly gagged. Half the urinals were clogged up with cigarette butts and paper towels but the thing that caught my attention was this huge condom machine. No kidding, it was huge! It had stuff in it I had never heard of and I was just kind of staring at it when in walks this big beefy guy with a buzz haircut. "Don't worry hippy boy," he says. "You can't get pregnant." He must have thought this was hilarious because he starts holding his big belly and making these snorting noises that might pass for laughter if you'd never heard any before. Funny guy, I bet myself he probably beat his wife and had a thing for bag ladies. When he turned his back I shot him the old bird. I can be pretty tough when I have to be.
I walked out to the diner and seated myself. After taking in a quick glance around the place I could tell I wasn't eating with the most elegant crowd. There weren't that many drifters at this hour, about five or six, all of which seemed like they considered soap and water to be a contraption they hadn't yet discovered. Straight across from my booth, I could see this man just sitting there, spooning sugar into his coffee. Not really drinking it, as if he was trying to see how much sugar he could pour before it would overflow.
I sat with my back against the booth and stared out the window at the nearly deserted parking lot, coated with small areas of melted snow and candy wrappers spiraling in an updraft. For a while I let my thoughts wonder without conscious direction. Questions danced in my mind like water drops in a frying pan. I shuffled positions in my seat and sighed. If only I could meet someone new. I guess my chances of that happening are somewhat diminished, seeing that I'm incapable of making eye contact with a women I don't know.
It was almost like the window was reflecting my soul back at me and for the first time I really took a deep look at myself. I was an empty parking lot, in the middle of nowhere, between home and that nameless place I'd always dreamed existed. I read this Frost poem once where he says, "Way leads on to way." I was thinking about how you do one thing and suddenly it leads you into the next thing and the next thing and you start feeling like your life has taken on a life of its own and all you are is a broken branch caught in a river current.
The air was suddenly rattled by the sound of a brusque, faded voice. For a second I was thankful for the disruption that pulled me back from dwelling on my thoughts.
"What'll it be?" The waitress almost demanded. This woman looked like she had smoked three cartons a day. While she may have look emaciated with age, I could tell by the sound of her voice that it was more then that, like she had devoted her life to destroying her youthful looks and replacing it with this snake like structure.
"Umm…I'll just have some water." I said as I started picking at some threads on my jeans. I simply couldn't bring myself to stare directly at her on an empty stomach.
"That's all!?" She scuffs out. "You're telling me you just wasted my time for some free water?"
I looked back up at her, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knew it made her day to trip me up. She'd been a waitress for about thirty years and apparently she never learned to socialize along the way. I wasn't in the mood for her though. I hate to argue with ignorant people, they just drag you down to their level and beat you with their experience. I ordered some eggs and tea, and by the time I got her feathers smoothed she gives me a little snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her in Salem.
I leaned back once more and placed my hands in my pockets. That's when my fingers brushed across the letter. In the midst of all the emotion I had forgotten to give it to Amber. I let a sigh overcome me as I pulled it out and unfolded it before me. It was marinated in my Adidas cologne that Amber often loved to inhale off the side of my neck as we'd cuddle. I began to skim over it for a second before I started to feel the tears well up in my eyes. I just stared blankly at the piece of paper, not really reading it but letting the emotions jump off the page at me.
"I love you." I mouthed the words without sound, then folded the letter and placed it in my right pant pocket. For years it rested within the top draw of my bureau, almost forgotten.
I sat in silence for the rest of my stay, almost without thought. After countless minutes, I drank my last swallow of tea, feeling it warm on my throat. Then I left the diner, leaving a tip of a penny for the bitch. Oh yeah, on top of all that, the breakfast was terrible!
Any who… I had to get back out on the road; the fog had started to slip back in like a bad cold; quick, moist, and drowsy.
The sun in a desperate attempt to show itself, failed miserably, causing the sky to look pale-orange; like a wet water painting where the orange is running down the canvas. Even so, it was still a nice day; it got warmer as I went on. I rolled down the window, the wind was fresh. So naturally I lit a cigarette. The heat filled my lungs and swept out a sigh, a confusing sigh. Was it relief… regret…? Then a song comes on the radio, my heart beats to it. I remember listening to it with Amber when we were kids. Music is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it makes people remember things they do not expect. Many thoughts, feelings, memories… things almost forgotten… regardless of whether the listener desires to remember or not. Now I'm thinking about Amber's slow smile. I can almost remember our first encounter…
It was the fall of 92' when I first met Amber. The season the Packers won the Super Bowl, just 93 days from Christmas. We met on the eighth month of my eighth year, as the sun had just begun to descend, on a Thursday in August. I grew up in a lonely house in a lonely neighborhood on a lonely side of town. I had no younger siblings and I was fairly young; to young to have made any friendships from school that generated any time spent together on weekends. Therefore I had a wild imagination, always playing by myself but at the time you couldn't tell me I was by myself. I was always off leading an army of super hero's to victory over my evil Chihuahua, Pinky.
I remember it was autumn, I was riding my bike through the neighborhood looking at the trees, laden with spots of brown, green, and orange. That's when I first noticed the new family moving into old lady Cony's house. Old lady Cony used to always bake cookies and let me have some when I came by on Saturdays. My mother told me she moved away, but I knew the truth. I stopped to catch a glance at the newcomers. I saw her mother first, she was slim, shy, and carried herself in a hesitant manner. She was expensively but primly dressed in a matching cashmere pullover and cardigan, with a tweed skirt and single strand of pearls, an upper-class-country-lady attire that I was later to figure she had dressed in for most of her adult life. In her smartly coiffed, once-blond gray hair were two golden barrettes. She possessed the sort of aristocratic good looks that may have been called pretty in her youth, but never beautiful. Her father was different though, he on the other hand… was dressed in very rustic attire. He was tall, athletic, with somewhat dark hair in which Amber took after. He was all fire and brimstone though, I could no more imagine Mr. Kocian with a sense of humor then I could imagine two moons in the sky. It wasn't all bad though, on the contrary. It sure made things a lot more interesting, primarily because in our latter years Amber was forced to crawl out her window so we could head to the graveyard for our late night forays.
I didn't see much evil in the family, not then at least. Not until I saw the little girl descend from the front door steps. Running to the car to get her doll; I could only think, "COOTIES!!" She was my age but much taller then me, I felt like a little troll compared to her. At the time she was wearing a red V-neck sweater that somehow accentuated the color of her light blue eyes. I remember pondering on that for a while. Though I wasn't averse to the idea of wearing a sweater during fall months, at the time I must have just wanted to pick at every negative flaw of the new inhabitants.
It wasn't until later that we became friends; she was almost like a sister to me. We grew up together, the only two kids for blocks. She would play my hero games, and therefore I was forced to play Barbie with her. She would always try to torment me with guilt until I did. I didn't mind though, she was my best friend. You only meet your once in a lifetime friend…once in a lifetime.
Later that school year we were hanging out in her backyard during spring break. The soothing music of Lynard Skynard's "Free Bird" was flowing from within her house, out unto her lawn, and resting within my memory. Her cousin David was over and the two were inside grabbing something cool to drink. I was just sort of lying back on the lawn, watching the clouds change shape in the sky above me; when Amber came out with two drinks of lemonade her mother had made for the both of us. She was wearing shorts and a smock-type blouse with long sleeves. The kind of thing you just slipped on over your head, she must have worn it to protect against sunburn; it's the only reason I can think of to wear long sleeves on such a murderously hot day. As I sat up I noticed I had a lapful of little white flowers. My hair was full of them too; I'd been laying, unaware in a storm of apple blossoms.
"You dork!" She'd call me, then hand me a glass. "My daddy is gonna take the Big Grey Dog in about an hour. My mommy said she will drive you home then if you want." The Big Grey Dog, of course, a Greyhound bus. The local depot was down on Front Street next to the Diner. Her parents only had one car at the time and her father often times had to go out of town for business, which forced him to catch the bus.
David busted out the back door and I swear I could feel my insides jump! "Stick em up!" He cried out and pointed his Nurf Tommy Gun at an invisible intruder. He tucked it under his arms, dropped into a crouch, and fired invisible bullets, yanking down the right side of his mouth so he could make the proper sound to go with it, a kind of eh-eh-eh from deep in his throat. "You'll never take me alive, copper! Blast em, Tommy! Nobody runs out on David! Ah, jeez, they got me!" Then he clutched his chest, spun around, and fell dead on the lawn. David was two years older then us and lived in the same town but rarely visited Amber. He was her cousin through her father's sister but Amber's mother and David's mother hardly got along.
"What are you nimrods doing?" He finally asked when he noticed us staring at him. Nimrod, it was his new word.
"You're ten and still playing with guns?" I asked, feeling a perverse desire to spoil his fun. "Will you ever grow up?"
"At least I'm not a nimrod! And I don't play Barbie like a little girl. Besides when I grow up I'm gonna be a magician and travel around with a carnival or circus, wearing a black suit and a black hat. You know, I'll pull rabbits and shit out of my hat."
"Rabbits will probably shit in your hat." I tittered at this for a second before Amber nudged me.
"If you swear I won't play with you!" She assured me.
We sat for a while in those intermittent showers of apple blossoms, together, watching the clouds pass by above us and occasionally taking sips of what was now warm lemonade.
"Alrighty," I said with a sigh as I stood up and scrummed a few pedals out of my hair, then looked solemnly at Amber. "I guess I should head home. I rode my bike and my parents probably want me to clean up for dinner. You touched my shoulder and it's gonna take me forever to scrub off your stink!"
The song changes, I take my mind off her and I crawl back inside myself. My head starts to clear, things start to make sense. I tell myself, "If she truly loves me, then she knows where to find me."
I arrived in Fort Pierce, Florida, sometime the next day. I was lost and couldn't find my cousin's apartment for hours. I spent more time looking for an apartment in Fort Pierce, then I did driving through the entire state of Tennessee. I guess there was a little disappointment mixed in with all my other emotions. I mean, it's not like I was expecting a band or a parade but it seemed to me that after all those years of waiting to get here, there should have been some acknowledgment on the part of the city. A dog barked from somewhere in the distance and someone yelled out something I didn't quite catch and then a door slammed. My cousin helped me unpack but I wasn't ready for bed yet. He told me he had work in the morning so he was going to catch some rest. I could tell he was glad to see me but since it was already dusk and getting cool I just started walking. I didn't really know where I was going, I just wandered the night like a vagrant looking for a cold brew. I smelt the fresh scent of the ocean coming in on a cool breeze. A leaf blew in an upward spiral of wind, and was carried off into some distant world. Unlike it I was now falling, falling into a deep pit called self-pity. I could only gaze at my dreams instead of achieving them. My hopes had fallen into a dark endless void that I could only see from afar. A torrent of emotions surged through my mind and my tremulous motions showed it.
Amber and I had once come down here for vacation; we stayed in this same apartment with my cousin, though we hung out on the beach most the time. We'd go to the sea before sunrise and watch the city lights go out one by one, the stars fade… then the horizon would glow almost like it was on fire, kinda rose colored. I'd slip my arms around her and pull her close as dawn begun to unfold before us. And she'd watch the sunrise with her head on my shoulder, wondering if anything could be better then what was happening at that moment. There was nothing more romantic… I'd burn alive, just to relive those days once more.
We had just graduated; the night sky wore the moon as its pendent. We walked the beach for what seemed like hours, miles away from wherever we parked. Lost in Florida, lost on the beach, lost in each others eyes. Amber held her sandals in her hands the entire time, letting the waves kiss her feet as we walked. Exhausted we found a place to sit. We sat silent for a while, watching the stars take place of one another. The waves came ashore and hit her feet; she'd giggle as it tickled her toes then descended back.
She lay between my legs, head laid back upon my shoulder looking out over the sea and the starlight shimmering atop the water.
"Royce?" Amber asked into the silence. Her voice seemed to hang in the air while she spoke. It was soft and fluent and almost musical in quality. In a way it coaxed me. I listened closely, letting her words touch me.
"Yes Amber?"
"Am I ugly?" She kept her voice low, as if whispering a secret that trailed off with every letter she pronounced.
"Uh-uh." I assured her earnestly. I began kneading her arms as she continued.
She turned toward the ocean, her eyes getting that far off gaze. "When I was a kid I thought I was." A tear slowly rolled down her cheek. "I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight. And I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly doll who I call Amber, and I keep yelling at her. 'You can't be ugly! Be pretty!' Its weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change too."
I softly kissed the back of her head, "You're beautiful."
A breeze broke the stillness and I felt her shiver in my arms. "Royce… I love you... I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Baby, in times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life."
I could almost feel her smile, "You're so corny."
"And horny."
She took my hands and kissed them. "Do you love me?" She said, looking up at me steadily with a thoughtful and speculative smirk. "I mean really love me. Because if you don't…I'll just have to kill you."
"Oddly enough, I do."
"You said 'I do'! I guess that means we're married!"
"I guess so." My voice trailed off. We were silent for a minute more before she continued.
"How long do you think we will be together, Royce?" Her voice was low and subdued.
I paused for a second, "Honey, I tell you what. If I were to drop a tear in this ocean tonight, I would love you until the one day I could find that tear again. I want to forever bathe in your sweat and lust. But you have to promise me back. Promise that you will always keep me around. I want to be closer to you, then your own skin. That is until you wear me out and trade me in for a new play toy."
She smiled then looked back over the ocean, satisfied, and with that we were silent once again. I held her close and stared up into the stars for the first time in what seemed like ages. The night was cool and crisp and that faint tropical aroma rode on the back of partial winds. Up above the stars sailed on into the endless dark abyss. The moon, millions of miles away, yet it shimmered so brightly, almost as if you could reach out and pluck it right out of the sky. While lost in its infinite beauty the waves came ashore once more and mauled my shoes. Now soaked I took them off along with my socks.
"Christ, I could use a cigarette." I told her as I set my shoes up shore.
She fires up two cigarettes and hands me one and I taste her lipstick on it. Suddenly, my heart's pounding so loud I can't hear anything else. I want to reach over and touch her and taste her sweat. Then she does it for me, she almost yanks my head clean off, shoving my mouth into hers so hard it hurts. An explosion that blasts away the dull gray years between the now and that fiery night when she was mine. She closed her eyes and parted her lips as I ran my fingers up and down her arms, slowly, lightly. Amber giggled, sending ripples through my bloodstream.
I rested my lips on hers, our foreheads connected as I spoke. "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
Then once again we were silent for a while; just looking at the sea and listening to the waves crash together. That day I finally began to understand what love must be, if it exists… When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: Incompleteness in absence.
It was no time for blunder nor hesitation. Without saying a word I took her hand in mine, gently tracing slow circles along the backside of it with my thumb. And then we kissed the most intense kiss I have ever felt. My mind blazed with excitement and stimulation. I inhaled the breath from her lips as I placed my hand on the small of her back, where I could still feel her heartbeat. A kiss is never just a kiss; there is a whole universe of meaning behind it. I kissed her neck, her cheek, her eyelids and the moisture of her kiss lingered long after we parted. I placed my hands on her cheek, willing her to look at me. She faced me with moist eyes, tears of joy, tears of passion, tears of hope for a future that never was. After a long silence, I brushed the tears from her cheek with my finger, a look of tenderness on my face.
My voice caught as I saw what her eyes were telling me, "If I could be anything else in this world, I would be your tear. So I could be born in your eye, live down your cheek, and die on your lips." I kissed her lips and both cheeks, then with my finger, softly brushed the places I had kissed.
Holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I felt weightless as I held her, as if all my heavy burdens were lifted with the slightest touch of her fingers. We lay there the rest of the night, talking about everything, the future, religion, love, loss… The silence was the best though, she lay, her head across my chest; listening to the faint sound of my heartbeat.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it. As every night has a day, every beginning has an end. I walked the rest of that night thinking about the past, never looking to the future and not caring about the present.
Amber did write from time to time, hesitant, almost tentative notes in which she talked about college and friends and a weekend trip to New York City. Appended to one that arrived in March of 2004 (her letters always came on deckle edged paper with flowers and hearts down the sides) was a stark P.S. "I think my mom and dad are going to get a divorce. He signed up for another 'hitch' and all she does is cry." Mostly, however she stuck to brighter things; she was taking dance classes and majoring in journalism. She was still friends with Ashley and Dave was going in and out of relationships.
As I opened each of her letters and pulled it out I would think, 'This is the last. I won't hear from her again. Ex's don't write letters for long, even if they promise. There are too many new things coming along. Time goes by so fast, TOO fast. She'll forget me.' After all I hadn't replied to a single letter she'd sent. But once every month for the next five months I would get another envelope with hearts and flowers dancing down the side, another sheet of deckle edged paper, more stuff about dancing and school and new shoes. Each letter was like one more labored breath from a loved one whose death now seems inevitable. One more breath…
Even Dave wrote me, it was only once but I was amazed and almost touched that he would try at all. Even now he had childishly big handwriting and it was painful to distinguish his words. He would brag about his new girlfriend and surprisingly he was doing well in school. Apparently his mother helped buy him a new car after graduating college, and a few weeks later he totaled it. He told his mother that a cow had darted out in front of the car. Now everyone knows a cow doesn't exactly dart anywhere, but his mother believed him.
That's about it. Amber's letters stopped coming in by 2005. Mostly I've guessed because I never wrote her back.
I dated from time to time but it wasn't until the winter of 2008 that I found a relationship that erupted into anything serious. Dianne Hayes, I’d met her at a local night club called, The Lions Den. This music club where local bands came to hone their skills in preparation for making the big time, and for a quarter you could break your cherry on the mechanical bull. She was a Dominican girl with big brown Latin eyes and a long hourglass figure. By the end of the night we were sitting by ourselves talking and laughing about anything that came to mind and having a blast. Half the time I couldn’t believe what I was hearing myself say. I was having trouble sounding intelligent and was behaving like a complete idiot and the funny thing was, she didn’t seem to mind. She was laughing and fooling around right back at me. I ended up spilling an entire coke in my lap but somehow that seemed to fit right in.
We had partly committed conversations, the type you have with someone late at night, when big ideas flow easily. But, I guess I wasn’t truly ready to fully commit myself into a relationship.
Towards the end of our relationship she told me once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. It's as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." I tried to deny it, but she didn't believe me. "I'm a women, I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. It's like you keep waiting for her to pop up out of thin air and take you away from all this…"
A month later she visited me at work and told me she'd met someone else. I understood. We parted as friends, and the following year I received a postcard from her saying she was married. I haven't heard from her since.
One day as I opened the front door to our apartment my cousin spoke from the couch, "You got a letter," He was watching Johnny Bravo and didn't turn from the television. "It's somewhere on the counter."
My heart began to beat hard against my adams apple, as soon as I saw the envelope. The hearts and roses were gone; our relationship was now but a distant memory, to long ago for such things. But I recognized the handwriting at once. I picked up the letter and slowly opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper, deckle edged. I read Amber's note, the last one I ever received from her.
Dear Royce,
'How are you? I'm fine.
I know we haven't spoken in quite some time but I thought you might like to know that my brother passed away.
The funeral is tomorrow, I don't expect to hear from you on such short notice.
But I was hoping you could at least keep him in your thoughts and prayers,
he used to look up to you when we were younger.
Your mother came by the other day and gave her condolences.
She says you two hardly talk anymore,
I guess you've become a very busy man.
Anyway, I hope you’re doing well.'
~Amber~
There was no news of her adventures in dancing, no news of how she did in school or journalism. No news of boyfriends, either, but I'd figured she probably had a few. I put down the envelope with hands that were shaky and numb. My heart was pounding harder than ever. For a moment I traced my fingers along the signature of her name, dry mouthed and unaware that my eyes had filled with tears.
Her little brother (Scotty) had been born with half a heart. I never knew the full extend of his medical condition, all I knew was, they had never expected him to live very long, but his determination proved to be stronger then anybody could imagine. Often times, I used to take him out on dates with Amber and me and at the fair I would win him stuffed animals. I guess in his latter years Scott's problems progressed and he was forced into a wheelchair and had to use oxygen tanks. He died on a Wednesday. His mother found him lying in bed and she swore for hours that he was only resting.
I never sent Amber a letter of apology. I wrote one but couldn't find the strength to send it. After that she never wrote back.
Months fell off the calendar, and before I knew it I was thirty-five, unwed, and stuck at a dead end job. My birthday came like a bullet to the head. It wasn't so happy to say the least. I got a call from my mother… my father had died. He went peacefully in his sleep. I caught a late flight to Michigan. Truthfully I wasn't in much of a hurry to see my father laying cold in a wooden box.
It was strange to be back home, especially for a funeral, and of all funerals my father's. He was an angel of mercy, always gave me a second chance. I approached my mother after the funeral. I let her hear my footsteps before they melted with the wind. Placing my hands on her shoulder I asked how she was. Tearful, she told me she was okay. We stood in silence for a while, listening to the cars pass on a distant highway. Then we made small talk, I asked her how all the relatives were; trying to avoid the real question I wanted to ask. After all, my father had just passed, all other problems seemed diminutive. But after a while I couldn't hinder it any longer.
"Mom… h-how has Amber been…? You know, since I left?"
She looked up at me, shocked and almost reluctant to speak.
"Amber… Amber passed, a few years back…"
Then it hits me like a kick in the nuts. It was cancer, lung cancer. She left behind two children and a husband. I sometimes dwell on the thought. I was the one that convinced her to start smoking. For that instant it wasn't as if I had last seen her sixteen years ago, weeping on her front porch steps, but as if she had always remained a friend, as close as a phone call or a trip up the street. I had nothing left to say, I just felt numb inside. My mind went off into distant worlds and I stared at the leaves changing on a tree for the longest time. The time I spent with her came and went in what seemed like a blank of an eye. But as we separated, time seemed to stop. Leaving me an eternity to mourn my loss… I left the place carrying a heavy burden on my shoulder. It was almost, more then I could take. I felt like my head was going to burst. So, I went to bed…
I decided to move back into town with my mother, I couldn't leave her alone. Sure I ended up having to go back, pick up my things and quit my job. But it was about time I left Florida anyway. I had run my life into a corner and was starting to crawl into the fetal position. Now don't get me wrong, I loved Florida but after long years of being there things begun to become repetitive. Besides, sand is overrated; it's just tiny little rocks…
I went for a walk on a fresh autumn evening, watching the leaves fall from looming skeletal branches. It was late afternoon, with red streaks cutting the late October sky, and the last remnants of the day were fading. The sky was slowly changing color, and as I was watching the sun go down, I remember thinking about that brief, flicking moment when the day suddenly turns into night.
Dusk, I realized then, it is an illusion, because the sun is neither above the horizon nor below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot co-exist at the same time. How would it feel, I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?
The constancy of the place brought back a flood of memories, and I felt my insides tighten as one by one I recognized landmarks I'd long since forgotten. A majestic willow tree on the banks of a river came into view next, and the memories became more intense. It looked the same as it had back then, branches low and thick, stretching horizontally along the ground with Spanish moss draped over the limbs like a veil. I remember sitting beneath that tree on a hot July day with someone who looked at me with a longing that took everything else away. And it had been at that moment that I'd first fallen in love.
It was odd, I knew that. I had grown up in Comstock, spent my first nineteen years here. But when I thought of Comstock, I seemed to only remember the time we spent together. Other memories were simply fragments; pieces here and there of growing up, and few, if any, evoked feeling.
I passed an old church, abandoned for years but still standing. Until I actually saw it, I hadn't realized how sure I'd been that it would have become a video-rental store or a sandwich shop or maybe a condominium. Instead it was exactly the same except the trim, now cream instead of green as if someone had once tried to rebuild. I recall exploring it once as a child. It was a dare, supposedly it was haunted but I never ran into any trouble other then a cobweb here and there. As I passed, I bowed my head and softly said a prayer. Not for myself though, I wished good fortune for my mother and the children of Amber.
Before I knew it, my legs carried me to a familiar street. It was almost as if a compulsion had driven me here. I stared down the road where broken sunlight shined through water oaks and hickory trees, illuminating the colors of fall. I could make out the shape of her house which she had inherited after her parents passed. For a moment I could almost make out the shape of two children playing in the leaves of the front lawn.
As I begun to close the distance between myself and the house, fallen leaves crunched beneath my feet, and my strides were barely longer then a pixy stick. A faint aroma of autumn leaves rode on the back of winds and hit me as I got closer, upon those winds voices came to me, 1993 ghost voices.
"You're ten and still playing with guns?"
"At least I'm not a nimrod! And I don't play Barbie like a little girl. Besides when I grow up I'm gonna be a magician and travel around with a carnival or circus, wearing a black suit and a black hat. You know, I'll pull rabbits and shit out of my hat."
"Rabbits will probably shit in your hat." I spoke the words, not declaiming them but not whispering them either, trying them on for size. I can't even remember what Amber had looked like, not with any real clarity at least. She is now but a shadow in my thoughts. Her face is darkened as if a light shines from behind her. I am not sure if this is due to failing memory or simply the passage of time. I have only one picture of her, and this too has faded. In another ten years it will be gone and her memory will be erased like a message in the sand.
The voices of the children became clearer as I closed the gap between us.
"You're gonna die!!" The little boy screamed out as he jumped on the girls back and dragged her into a pile of leaves. They fell in together, laughing and giggling.
The girl stood up with a big smile on her face, "NEVER! I'm gonna live forever! …or die trying…" Her voice innocent and dreamlike. Like a whisper, a light wind flowing through the trees. I stood still for a moment, my shadow lengthening into the street. She reminded me so much of her mother it almost made my stomach clinch.
"Ava!" Her father called from the front doorsteps. "Time to come in and clean up!"
She let out a profound sigh, "I need a new name, one that's not so worn out from being called so much." Turning to the boy she flashed a smile, "Bah bye! I have to go eat now."
As I watched her depart into the lamination of the house, I almost wanted to call out for her. I wanted to stop her, though I had nothing to say. I just wanted to be around her for a few seconds more. She looked just like her mother when we were kids. But I didn't, I just kept on walking…I have to remind myself that we were smaller then, small enough to live our brightly hued lives under the mushrooms, all the time believing them to be trees, shelter from the sheltering sky.
I walked the entire town that night, reminiscing on past events that photographs couldn't capture. The air was cool on my skin, almost crisp, and the sky was a haze of different colors: black directly above me like a mountain peak, then blues of infinite range, becoming lighter until it met the horizon, where gray took its place. Just like the winds of change I vanished into the silver twilight that preceded sunset.
My dreams are a cruel joke… They give me what I can't have, only to snatch it from me with the dawning of a new morning. I dream that I'm still with her. We lay before the fireplace with nothing on but the covers we were wrapped in. The room was silent, save the occasional crackle of fire. Outside it was cold as hell, as a majestic storm begun to approach… those poor cats n' dogs. The rain hugged the windowpane, in a slow vertical expenditure of malaises.
As the hall clock chimed the twelve hour, I started kissing at the back of her neck. Amber rolls over, looking up at me steadily. I stare back, watching the fire flicker in her eyes, a burning yearn we both hold deeply within the pit of our stomach to taste one another's sweat.
She reached out and ran her fingers along my chest, "There is nothing else in the world I want more right now, then your kiss." Then she brushed the hair back behind her ear, it was a gesture she made that I loved watching. She smiled and it hit me for about the millionth time how beautiful she was. I was thinking about how her skin felt, how her hair smelled, and how bright her eyes were in the firelight. Then she made a sudden whimper and I knew I loved her more then I'd ever loved anyone.
She's a goddess, my angel, sent from heaven to bestow on me endless bliss. If I could choose a heaven it would be to live all of the fantasies she held for me unto eternity. Her eyes fluttered open to reveal deep pools of hypnotizing sapphire which lit up my soul like the stars on a moonless summer night. She must have felt my passion in her dreams for her touch revealed a plan to quell my deepest desires. I looked deeply into her, drawn like a moth to a flame my lips became one with hers. The shadows, cast from her perfection, flickered in the fire light.
Sweet was the taste of our lust for each other. Her eyes, heavy with passion, closed once again; ever so slowly. I decided to prolong the kiss, and press slightly more, my lips to hers. She felt the increase in pressure, the fullest extent of my lips intertwined with hers and the warm feelings it stirred inside of her became more prevalent. Arms awoke from her sides and wrapped around my body. I returned the favor and continued to press harder against her. My whole body shuddered as its fate became the same as my lips, held fast against her like I belonged there from the very beginning. Her hands wound their way up my back caressing me and holding me at the same time. They found there way to my face and rested on my cheeks.
Her thumbs grazed the top of my ears as she pushed me away from her slightly. Our eyes opened simultaneously and we glanced into each others souls. I saw in her the ultimate lover and gentlewoman. Her spirit revealed truth. Untouched and untainted, it contained the perfection and clarity of the most valued diamonds in existence. Time slips away and becomes meaningless, the world became like our candle, we were the flame; it slowly melted around us as we burned throughout the night.
My dreams are a cruel joke… they taunt me. Even in my dreams I'm an idiot… who knows he's about to wake up to reality…
I woke up in a cold sweat and warm tears. The smell of her perfume lingered, long after I had awoke. I lay there for a second, watching shadows dance across the ceiling like distant tumbleweeds rolling across the desert. Lightning flashed outside my window, illuminating the room long enough to get a quick glimpse of my surroundings. In the quiet moments before the thunder, I thought I saw Amber standing in the doorway. The thunder finally sounded and I was alone again. I almost felt like I was still haunted by her presence, her smile, her smell, …my regrets… slowly I got up and made my way downstairs. My footsteps creaked as I walked down the cold wooden steps that descended into the living room.
I sat in the dark of the room as the moonlight pasted shadows of the cold winter rain falling outside my window. I felt like I was lost in a waken dream. Thunder boomed once more, breaking the stillness in the air. The storm in full fury, winds whipping the rain in circles. I feel Amber sitting beside me, staring out the window; watching the rain as we often did as kids. I can see her mirage, sitting there smiling at me, as she lay her hand on my knee. I mirror it back then shake her memory from my mind. My anger outweighs my grief. An impossible anger strangling grief until the memory of your loved ones are just… poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved, never existed at all…
As the hall clock chimed in the twelve hour, I could feel the hot breath of her whispers on the back of my neck. Silent whispers of the night; goodbye.
I visited her grave the next day. It was snowing and it took me forever to find. Now here I am, looming over her; silent as the trees. Nothing is more powerful then words written in stone. The wind gently blows as if whispering a secret in my ear; I close my eyes and listen; as a long cold tear runs down my face and lands on her name. I softly whisper.
"I've lain awake at night, thinking of you. …You know… that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, somewhere in the lost whispers of time, where it's only you and me."
Squatting down, I brushed the snow off her grave and placed a letter, yellow with age and with what seems like tearstains on it. "I think I would miss you, even if I'd never met you. I'd give up my tomorrow, just to hold you today. That's all I wish for, with all the years, months, weeks, days, and hours we had together. All I wish for is one more minute. But then again, that would just leave me; wishing for another… Well, I always have the next life."
Love unexpressed is a crime against the heart. She was the one in which I judged all others, and nobody came close. Slowly I stood up and walked away. Walked off into the distance, as my footsteps dwindled in the snow dust.
It starts off with a letter then the main plot begins. It seems that most people just read the FF fan fic here, but hopefully somebody will give this one a shot as well.
My dearest Amber,
I could not sleep last night because I know that it is over between us. There is no drink powerful enough to quell my exquisite inner pain.
The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we've lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we've found each other. And maybe each time, we've been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.
When I look at you, I see your beauty and grace and know they have grown stronger with every life you have lived. And I know I have spent every life before this one searching for you. Not someone like you, but you, for your soul and mine must always come together. And then, for a reason neither of us understands, we've been forced to say goodbye.
I would love to tell you that everything will work out for us, and I promise to do all I can to make sure it does. But if we never meet again and this is truly goodbye, I know we will see each other again in another life. We will find each other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love each other in that time, but for all the times we've had before.
And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summers beneath the stars, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. May the wind always be at your back, and the sun upon your face, and the winds of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.
Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we did, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared into my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it. Every now and then, I wish it was then instead of now. But still ,sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing, I can close my eyes and just for a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time hangs in the air like fireflies in a mid summer nights sky, your memories hang before me; lit like a star hanging in my moonless night soul.
Lets not say goodbye. Lets just say, I love you,
Royce
With an echoing shut of my truck door, the sound rang off into the distant morning. I remember inhaling the cold dewy morning air. I was young and naive back then. I stood tall, lanky, and looked a little older than I was. My hair was a little long, probably to long.
Well, as I was saying, I was young and so was the day. I had worn an old, faded, dark blue, corduroy suit jacket over a white T-shirt, faded blue jeans and square-toed boots.
I softly stepped onto her lawn, the cold wet frosted-grass crunched beneath my feet.
I stood staring up at her house which was filled with phantom memories of a childhood long deceased. The lingering sound of laughter, giggles, and kisses haunted the lawn….
It was early, the windows of the cars in her driveway were fogged with dew and there were water drops forming on the handlebars of her brother's tricycle. Her house, a white two-story colonel, similar to the houses lining both sides of the street, was framed by a gray sky.
I made my way to her front steps and before I could knock Amber swung open the door and stepped out. Slowly she shut the door behind her but still hadn't made eye contact with me. There was almost nothing to say. I was trying to look her in the eye to gain confidence, but she wouldn't look at me. She stared off into the distance and occasionally glanced over at my truck.
A frown conquered my lips. "I'll…I'll be leaving tonight…" the words were stone cold to my heart. All blood flow had stopped, neither bird nor cricket made a sound. Not even the wind dared interrupt us. "I haven't spoken with my parents. I plan on calling them from the road."
Silence fell once more. It's kinda funny, at the time it seemed like there was nothing to say. But now that I look back… there was a million…
Amber reached out to touch my shoulder then pulled herself back. She lowered her head and softly sighed.
"Sorry…" I softly whispered. I took her in my arms and whispered it over and over. A robin flew overhead making late haste south. Amber stepped back and stared me in the eyes. The wind gently started back up; blowing her hair every now and then. Her arms were crossed, as if she were cold. A light breeze blew strands of her rich brown hair into her face. She uncrossed her arms and softly brushed the hair back behind her ear. She was slender, willowy, and very beautiful. She wore a lot of jewelry; earrings, necklaces and rings. Her cloths were newer and more fashionable then mine. She was very much a part of this neighborhood with its pools and manicured lawns.
"I…I'm sorry; I don't remember the address by heart." I was kicking at small stones and an imaginary bump at the edge of her steps. "I'll call you to let you know…"
The day was quite as a grave, and for a second a crazy calm swept over us before the wind rises electric. She shivered in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree. Her usual beauty, as clear and deep as a reflection of eternity, was now shattered by terror, crazed by sharp lines of an anguish that was close to grief. She was held together only by desperate hope. I could hardly bear the sight of her in such pain. It was then I felt something fierce within my stomach. I took her close one last time, her perfume a sweet promise that brings tears to my eyes. She's soft and warm and almost weightless in my arms. I whisper one last time in her ear.
"I'll always love you."
She hugs me harder and sends shivers down my spine as she whispers back.
"Always and never."
I walked back down the path to my truck. Amber shouted something, I couldn’t quite make out over the racket of a passing motorcycle, I let it melt with the wind. I sat down in my truck, started it up and dwindled down the road.
I had been traveling for hours. It was about 3:00 AM and my truck was doing 65 on this straight as a preacher highway, somewhere in the middle of Ohio. The road had recently been resurfaced and the lane markings hadn't yet been repainted. There were no streetlights, no signs of people, no towns off in the distance, nothing but a deep tar like blackness that my weak, yellowish headlights were just barely penetrating. Oh, yeah, and it was snowing. Crazy ghost sheets of swirling snow dancing across the road, not really sticking to anything but wrapping around the headlight beams and creating the illusion that I was traveling through a dark funhouse tunnel.
After awhile my legs begun to cramp, besides I was tired as piss. When I came upon the next truck stop I pulled in to catch some rest. For a while I just sat there, radio on, watching as snow started to dust on the hood of my truck. I must have turned the truck off around four and fell asleep. I fell into a dream; dreams in which the past still hunts me.
It was the end of first semester in tenth grade. I had chased Amber with notes in the halls, nervous conversations by her locker, walks home, countless Cokes, jokes and after Friday night football games French fries at Franco's. Saturday afternoons we went to the movies and sat in the balcony laughing and making fun of the people on the screen and occasionally tossing popcorn at people we knew sitting in the lower level. Later, sitting with our backs up against a tombstone in the Sacred Heart Cemetery behind the trees, I'd smoke cigarettes and like a soothsayer reading the stars, tell her future. She was going to be a great writer, a great singer, and a great painter. I was as sure of those things as I was the one day I wasn't chasing her anymore. She had stopped running without me even noticing. Now, after Francos, instead of friends on a walk home, there were awkward kisses and parties in the basements of friends whose parent's were out or just to tired to care what we did. And a funny thing happened to the city. It seemed to have changed overnight. I noticed houses, trees, colors, shapes and smells that had always been there, but of whose existence I was somehow just now becoming aware. And I loved it all; the park, the lights downtown, even the boarded up apartment buildings. We found secret places; the loading dock in the ally behind Rex-All Drugs, the garage behind old lady Daulton's house were like swift rides through tunnels, kisses that would stop the world and time and leave me breathless, bright eyed and grinning like a madman. I wrote her poems and stories and explained them all in great length, pointing out the significance of each line. She listened to me, eyes bright, nodding and encouraging; then gave me poems in return. Poems that made mine seem like drivel, poems that read like four part harmonies to what I was feeling. She made the streetlights shine like stars and after leaving her each night I would run home, effortlessly, smiling into the darkness.
Its funny how whatever you're going through, you're sure it will last forever… It's like that Dylan lyric, "She's everything I need in love, but I can't be fooled by that." I just didn't want to believe in that Romeo & Juliet bull; after all, look what happened to them.
It had always been my life long dream to move south, where the sun shines all year round, and I'd never have to be burdened with the cold snow that would frost my veins and send me into bitter still winters. Where the voices of forgotten people are just shadows, flickering palely in my mind. I was a fool though; to think a girl like that would follow me to any corner of the world and listen to my every whim. She was a small town girl, loved the country and never wanted to leave her childhood memories. She wanted to raise a family, a family in which would have the same good childhood experiences she had. She wanted to live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich. To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart. To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, and hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. In other words, she lived her life in a way Robert Browning once quoted it to be, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Not I though, I wanted to see the world, travel and do this and that… I always dreamed that my future had something special in store for it. I had desires to go elsewhere and not end up mentally dead; a 'townie,' dreamless, broken, and old before my time.
I guess the only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty.
The sun awoke, rising red off the horizon, like the all mighty phoenix rising out the dark ashes of night. Red and orange painted the trees making even this old dirty truck stop look like a place in which God would vacation. The snow had already melted but the streets were still wet. Now that it was light out, I got a chance scrutinize the place. "EAT HERE," was the extent of the tarnished sign that loomed over the truck stop.
I went to the restroom, my stomach was hurting. I had to take a shit… It was one of those shits that pains you so bad that it brings a tear to your eye. Then when it's finally done you only drop a pebble, and your thinking, "What the hell!?" Then you get pissed and before you know it you're yelling at your own shit.
Well anyway, I go in and man it stunk so bad in there I nearly gagged. Half the urinals were clogged up with cigarette butts and paper towels but the thing that caught my attention was this huge condom machine. No kidding, it was huge! It had stuff in it I had never heard of and I was just kind of staring at it when in walks this big beefy guy with a buzz haircut. "Don't worry hippy boy," he says. "You can't get pregnant." He must have thought this was hilarious because he starts holding his big belly and making these snorting noises that might pass for laughter if you'd never heard any before. Funny guy, I bet myself he probably beat his wife and had a thing for bag ladies. When he turned his back I shot him the old bird. I can be pretty tough when I have to be.
I walked out to the diner and seated myself. After taking in a quick glance around the place I could tell I wasn't eating with the most elegant crowd. There weren't that many drifters at this hour, about five or six, all of which seemed like they considered soap and water to be a contraption they hadn't yet discovered. Straight across from my booth, I could see this man just sitting there, spooning sugar into his coffee. Not really drinking it, as if he was trying to see how much sugar he could pour before it would overflow.
I sat with my back against the booth and stared out the window at the nearly deserted parking lot, coated with small areas of melted snow and candy wrappers spiraling in an updraft. For a while I let my thoughts wonder without conscious direction. Questions danced in my mind like water drops in a frying pan. I shuffled positions in my seat and sighed. If only I could meet someone new. I guess my chances of that happening are somewhat diminished, seeing that I'm incapable of making eye contact with a women I don't know.
It was almost like the window was reflecting my soul back at me and for the first time I really took a deep look at myself. I was an empty parking lot, in the middle of nowhere, between home and that nameless place I'd always dreamed existed. I read this Frost poem once where he says, "Way leads on to way." I was thinking about how you do one thing and suddenly it leads you into the next thing and the next thing and you start feeling like your life has taken on a life of its own and all you are is a broken branch caught in a river current.
The air was suddenly rattled by the sound of a brusque, faded voice. For a second I was thankful for the disruption that pulled me back from dwelling on my thoughts.
"What'll it be?" The waitress almost demanded. This woman looked like she had smoked three cartons a day. While she may have look emaciated with age, I could tell by the sound of her voice that it was more then that, like she had devoted her life to destroying her youthful looks and replacing it with this snake like structure.
"Umm…I'll just have some water." I said as I started picking at some threads on my jeans. I simply couldn't bring myself to stare directly at her on an empty stomach.
"That's all!?" She scuffs out. "You're telling me you just wasted my time for some free water?"
I looked back up at her, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knew it made her day to trip me up. She'd been a waitress for about thirty years and apparently she never learned to socialize along the way. I wasn't in the mood for her though. I hate to argue with ignorant people, they just drag you down to their level and beat you with their experience. I ordered some eggs and tea, and by the time I got her feathers smoothed she gives me a little snort in passing, if she'd been born at the right time they would have burned her in Salem.
I leaned back once more and placed my hands in my pockets. That's when my fingers brushed across the letter. In the midst of all the emotion I had forgotten to give it to Amber. I let a sigh overcome me as I pulled it out and unfolded it before me. It was marinated in my Adidas cologne that Amber often loved to inhale off the side of my neck as we'd cuddle. I began to skim over it for a second before I started to feel the tears well up in my eyes. I just stared blankly at the piece of paper, not really reading it but letting the emotions jump off the page at me.
"I love you." I mouthed the words without sound, then folded the letter and placed it in my right pant pocket. For years it rested within the top draw of my bureau, almost forgotten.
I sat in silence for the rest of my stay, almost without thought. After countless minutes, I drank my last swallow of tea, feeling it warm on my throat. Then I left the diner, leaving a tip of a penny for the bitch. Oh yeah, on top of all that, the breakfast was terrible!
Any who… I had to get back out on the road; the fog had started to slip back in like a bad cold; quick, moist, and drowsy.
The sun in a desperate attempt to show itself, failed miserably, causing the sky to look pale-orange; like a wet water painting where the orange is running down the canvas. Even so, it was still a nice day; it got warmer as I went on. I rolled down the window, the wind was fresh. So naturally I lit a cigarette. The heat filled my lungs and swept out a sigh, a confusing sigh. Was it relief… regret…? Then a song comes on the radio, my heart beats to it. I remember listening to it with Amber when we were kids. Music is a mysterious thing. Sometimes it makes people remember things they do not expect. Many thoughts, feelings, memories… things almost forgotten… regardless of whether the listener desires to remember or not. Now I'm thinking about Amber's slow smile. I can almost remember our first encounter…
It was the fall of 92' when I first met Amber. The season the Packers won the Super Bowl, just 93 days from Christmas. We met on the eighth month of my eighth year, as the sun had just begun to descend, on a Thursday in August. I grew up in a lonely house in a lonely neighborhood on a lonely side of town. I had no younger siblings and I was fairly young; to young to have made any friendships from school that generated any time spent together on weekends. Therefore I had a wild imagination, always playing by myself but at the time you couldn't tell me I was by myself. I was always off leading an army of super hero's to victory over my evil Chihuahua, Pinky.
I remember it was autumn, I was riding my bike through the neighborhood looking at the trees, laden with spots of brown, green, and orange. That's when I first noticed the new family moving into old lady Cony's house. Old lady Cony used to always bake cookies and let me have some when I came by on Saturdays. My mother told me she moved away, but I knew the truth. I stopped to catch a glance at the newcomers. I saw her mother first, she was slim, shy, and carried herself in a hesitant manner. She was expensively but primly dressed in a matching cashmere pullover and cardigan, with a tweed skirt and single strand of pearls, an upper-class-country-lady attire that I was later to figure she had dressed in for most of her adult life. In her smartly coiffed, once-blond gray hair were two golden barrettes. She possessed the sort of aristocratic good looks that may have been called pretty in her youth, but never beautiful. Her father was different though, he on the other hand… was dressed in very rustic attire. He was tall, athletic, with somewhat dark hair in which Amber took after. He was all fire and brimstone though, I could no more imagine Mr. Kocian with a sense of humor then I could imagine two moons in the sky. It wasn't all bad though, on the contrary. It sure made things a lot more interesting, primarily because in our latter years Amber was forced to crawl out her window so we could head to the graveyard for our late night forays.
I didn't see much evil in the family, not then at least. Not until I saw the little girl descend from the front door steps. Running to the car to get her doll; I could only think, "COOTIES!!" She was my age but much taller then me, I felt like a little troll compared to her. At the time she was wearing a red V-neck sweater that somehow accentuated the color of her light blue eyes. I remember pondering on that for a while. Though I wasn't averse to the idea of wearing a sweater during fall months, at the time I must have just wanted to pick at every negative flaw of the new inhabitants.
It wasn't until later that we became friends; she was almost like a sister to me. We grew up together, the only two kids for blocks. She would play my hero games, and therefore I was forced to play Barbie with her. She would always try to torment me with guilt until I did. I didn't mind though, she was my best friend. You only meet your once in a lifetime friend…once in a lifetime.
Later that school year we were hanging out in her backyard during spring break. The soothing music of Lynard Skynard's "Free Bird" was flowing from within her house, out unto her lawn, and resting within my memory. Her cousin David was over and the two were inside grabbing something cool to drink. I was just sort of lying back on the lawn, watching the clouds change shape in the sky above me; when Amber came out with two drinks of lemonade her mother had made for the both of us. She was wearing shorts and a smock-type blouse with long sleeves. The kind of thing you just slipped on over your head, she must have worn it to protect against sunburn; it's the only reason I can think of to wear long sleeves on such a murderously hot day. As I sat up I noticed I had a lapful of little white flowers. My hair was full of them too; I'd been laying, unaware in a storm of apple blossoms.
"You dork!" She'd call me, then hand me a glass. "My daddy is gonna take the Big Grey Dog in about an hour. My mommy said she will drive you home then if you want." The Big Grey Dog, of course, a Greyhound bus. The local depot was down on Front Street next to the Diner. Her parents only had one car at the time and her father often times had to go out of town for business, which forced him to catch the bus.
David busted out the back door and I swear I could feel my insides jump! "Stick em up!" He cried out and pointed his Nurf Tommy Gun at an invisible intruder. He tucked it under his arms, dropped into a crouch, and fired invisible bullets, yanking down the right side of his mouth so he could make the proper sound to go with it, a kind of eh-eh-eh from deep in his throat. "You'll never take me alive, copper! Blast em, Tommy! Nobody runs out on David! Ah, jeez, they got me!" Then he clutched his chest, spun around, and fell dead on the lawn. David was two years older then us and lived in the same town but rarely visited Amber. He was her cousin through her father's sister but Amber's mother and David's mother hardly got along.
"What are you nimrods doing?" He finally asked when he noticed us staring at him. Nimrod, it was his new word.
"You're ten and still playing with guns?" I asked, feeling a perverse desire to spoil his fun. "Will you ever grow up?"
"At least I'm not a nimrod! And I don't play Barbie like a little girl. Besides when I grow up I'm gonna be a magician and travel around with a carnival or circus, wearing a black suit and a black hat. You know, I'll pull rabbits and shit out of my hat."
"Rabbits will probably shit in your hat." I tittered at this for a second before Amber nudged me.
"If you swear I won't play with you!" She assured me.
We sat for a while in those intermittent showers of apple blossoms, together, watching the clouds pass by above us and occasionally taking sips of what was now warm lemonade.
"Alrighty," I said with a sigh as I stood up and scrummed a few pedals out of my hair, then looked solemnly at Amber. "I guess I should head home. I rode my bike and my parents probably want me to clean up for dinner. You touched my shoulder and it's gonna take me forever to scrub off your stink!"
The song changes, I take my mind off her and I crawl back inside myself. My head starts to clear, things start to make sense. I tell myself, "If she truly loves me, then she knows where to find me."
I arrived in Fort Pierce, Florida, sometime the next day. I was lost and couldn't find my cousin's apartment for hours. I spent more time looking for an apartment in Fort Pierce, then I did driving through the entire state of Tennessee. I guess there was a little disappointment mixed in with all my other emotions. I mean, it's not like I was expecting a band or a parade but it seemed to me that after all those years of waiting to get here, there should have been some acknowledgment on the part of the city. A dog barked from somewhere in the distance and someone yelled out something I didn't quite catch and then a door slammed. My cousin helped me unpack but I wasn't ready for bed yet. He told me he had work in the morning so he was going to catch some rest. I could tell he was glad to see me but since it was already dusk and getting cool I just started walking. I didn't really know where I was going, I just wandered the night like a vagrant looking for a cold brew. I smelt the fresh scent of the ocean coming in on a cool breeze. A leaf blew in an upward spiral of wind, and was carried off into some distant world. Unlike it I was now falling, falling into a deep pit called self-pity. I could only gaze at my dreams instead of achieving them. My hopes had fallen into a dark endless void that I could only see from afar. A torrent of emotions surged through my mind and my tremulous motions showed it.
Amber and I had once come down here for vacation; we stayed in this same apartment with my cousin, though we hung out on the beach most the time. We'd go to the sea before sunrise and watch the city lights go out one by one, the stars fade… then the horizon would glow almost like it was on fire, kinda rose colored. I'd slip my arms around her and pull her close as dawn begun to unfold before us. And she'd watch the sunrise with her head on my shoulder, wondering if anything could be better then what was happening at that moment. There was nothing more romantic… I'd burn alive, just to relive those days once more.
We had just graduated; the night sky wore the moon as its pendent. We walked the beach for what seemed like hours, miles away from wherever we parked. Lost in Florida, lost on the beach, lost in each others eyes. Amber held her sandals in her hands the entire time, letting the waves kiss her feet as we walked. Exhausted we found a place to sit. We sat silent for a while, watching the stars take place of one another. The waves came ashore and hit her feet; she'd giggle as it tickled her toes then descended back.
She lay between my legs, head laid back upon my shoulder looking out over the sea and the starlight shimmering atop the water.
"Royce?" Amber asked into the silence. Her voice seemed to hang in the air while she spoke. It was soft and fluent and almost musical in quality. In a way it coaxed me. I listened closely, letting her words touch me.
"Yes Amber?"
"Am I ugly?" She kept her voice low, as if whispering a secret that trailed off with every letter she pronounced.
"Uh-uh." I assured her earnestly. I began kneading her arms as she continued.
She turned toward the ocean, her eyes getting that far off gaze. "When I was a kid I thought I was." A tear slowly rolled down her cheek. "I can't believe I'm crying already. Sometimes I think people don't understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don't matter. So, I'm eight. And I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly doll who I call Amber, and I keep yelling at her. 'You can't be ugly! Be pretty!' Its weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change too."
I softly kissed the back of her head, "You're beautiful."
A breeze broke the stillness and I felt her shiver in my arms. "Royce… I love you... I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Baby, in times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life."
I could almost feel her smile, "You're so corny."
"And horny."
She took my hands and kissed them. "Do you love me?" She said, looking up at me steadily with a thoughtful and speculative smirk. "I mean really love me. Because if you don't…I'll just have to kill you."
"Oddly enough, I do."
"You said 'I do'! I guess that means we're married!"
"I guess so." My voice trailed off. We were silent for a minute more before she continued.
"How long do you think we will be together, Royce?" Her voice was low and subdued.
I paused for a second, "Honey, I tell you what. If I were to drop a tear in this ocean tonight, I would love you until the one day I could find that tear again. I want to forever bathe in your sweat and lust. But you have to promise me back. Promise that you will always keep me around. I want to be closer to you, then your own skin. That is until you wear me out and trade me in for a new play toy."
She smiled then looked back over the ocean, satisfied, and with that we were silent once again. I held her close and stared up into the stars for the first time in what seemed like ages. The night was cool and crisp and that faint tropical aroma rode on the back of partial winds. Up above the stars sailed on into the endless dark abyss. The moon, millions of miles away, yet it shimmered so brightly, almost as if you could reach out and pluck it right out of the sky. While lost in its infinite beauty the waves came ashore once more and mauled my shoes. Now soaked I took them off along with my socks.
"Christ, I could use a cigarette." I told her as I set my shoes up shore.
She fires up two cigarettes and hands me one and I taste her lipstick on it. Suddenly, my heart's pounding so loud I can't hear anything else. I want to reach over and touch her and taste her sweat. Then she does it for me, she almost yanks my head clean off, shoving my mouth into hers so hard it hurts. An explosion that blasts away the dull gray years between the now and that fiery night when she was mine. She closed her eyes and parted her lips as I ran my fingers up and down her arms, slowly, lightly. Amber giggled, sending ripples through my bloodstream.
I rested my lips on hers, our foreheads connected as I spoke. "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
Then once again we were silent for a while; just looking at the sea and listening to the waves crash together. That day I finally began to understand what love must be, if it exists… When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: Incompleteness in absence.
It was no time for blunder nor hesitation. Without saying a word I took her hand in mine, gently tracing slow circles along the backside of it with my thumb. And then we kissed the most intense kiss I have ever felt. My mind blazed with excitement and stimulation. I inhaled the breath from her lips as I placed my hand on the small of her back, where I could still feel her heartbeat. A kiss is never just a kiss; there is a whole universe of meaning behind it. I kissed her neck, her cheek, her eyelids and the moisture of her kiss lingered long after we parted. I placed my hands on her cheek, willing her to look at me. She faced me with moist eyes, tears of joy, tears of passion, tears of hope for a future that never was. After a long silence, I brushed the tears from her cheek with my finger, a look of tenderness on my face.
My voice caught as I saw what her eyes were telling me, "If I could be anything else in this world, I would be your tear. So I could be born in your eye, live down your cheek, and die on your lips." I kissed her lips and both cheeks, then with my finger, softly brushed the places I had kissed.
Holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat. I felt weightless as I held her, as if all my heavy burdens were lifted with the slightest touch of her fingers. We lay there the rest of the night, talking about everything, the future, religion, love, loss… The silence was the best though, she lay, her head across my chest; listening to the faint sound of my heartbeat.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it. As every night has a day, every beginning has an end. I walked the rest of that night thinking about the past, never looking to the future and not caring about the present.
Amber did write from time to time, hesitant, almost tentative notes in which she talked about college and friends and a weekend trip to New York City. Appended to one that arrived in March of 2004 (her letters always came on deckle edged paper with flowers and hearts down the sides) was a stark P.S. "I think my mom and dad are going to get a divorce. He signed up for another 'hitch' and all she does is cry." Mostly, however she stuck to brighter things; she was taking dance classes and majoring in journalism. She was still friends with Ashley and Dave was going in and out of relationships.
As I opened each of her letters and pulled it out I would think, 'This is the last. I won't hear from her again. Ex's don't write letters for long, even if they promise. There are too many new things coming along. Time goes by so fast, TOO fast. She'll forget me.' After all I hadn't replied to a single letter she'd sent. But once every month for the next five months I would get another envelope with hearts and flowers dancing down the side, another sheet of deckle edged paper, more stuff about dancing and school and new shoes. Each letter was like one more labored breath from a loved one whose death now seems inevitable. One more breath…
Even Dave wrote me, it was only once but I was amazed and almost touched that he would try at all. Even now he had childishly big handwriting and it was painful to distinguish his words. He would brag about his new girlfriend and surprisingly he was doing well in school. Apparently his mother helped buy him a new car after graduating college, and a few weeks later he totaled it. He told his mother that a cow had darted out in front of the car. Now everyone knows a cow doesn't exactly dart anywhere, but his mother believed him.
That's about it. Amber's letters stopped coming in by 2005. Mostly I've guessed because I never wrote her back.
I dated from time to time but it wasn't until the winter of 2008 that I found a relationship that erupted into anything serious. Dianne Hayes, I’d met her at a local night club called, The Lions Den. This music club where local bands came to hone their skills in preparation for making the big time, and for a quarter you could break your cherry on the mechanical bull. She was a Dominican girl with big brown Latin eyes and a long hourglass figure. By the end of the night we were sitting by ourselves talking and laughing about anything that came to mind and having a blast. Half the time I couldn’t believe what I was hearing myself say. I was having trouble sounding intelligent and was behaving like a complete idiot and the funny thing was, she didn’t seem to mind. She was laughing and fooling around right back at me. I ended up spilling an entire coke in my lap but somehow that seemed to fit right in.
We had partly committed conversations, the type you have with someone late at night, when big ideas flow easily. But, I guess I wasn’t truly ready to fully commit myself into a relationship.
Towards the end of our relationship she told me once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. It's as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." I tried to deny it, but she didn't believe me. "I'm a women, I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. It's like you keep waiting for her to pop up out of thin air and take you away from all this…"
A month later she visited me at work and told me she'd met someone else. I understood. We parted as friends, and the following year I received a postcard from her saying she was married. I haven't heard from her since.
One day as I opened the front door to our apartment my cousin spoke from the couch, "You got a letter," He was watching Johnny Bravo and didn't turn from the television. "It's somewhere on the counter."
My heart began to beat hard against my adams apple, as soon as I saw the envelope. The hearts and roses were gone; our relationship was now but a distant memory, to long ago for such things. But I recognized the handwriting at once. I picked up the letter and slowly opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper, deckle edged. I read Amber's note, the last one I ever received from her.
Dear Royce,
'How are you? I'm fine.
I know we haven't spoken in quite some time but I thought you might like to know that my brother passed away.
The funeral is tomorrow, I don't expect to hear from you on such short notice.
But I was hoping you could at least keep him in your thoughts and prayers,
he used to look up to you when we were younger.
Your mother came by the other day and gave her condolences.
She says you two hardly talk anymore,
I guess you've become a very busy man.
Anyway, I hope you’re doing well.'
~Amber~
There was no news of her adventures in dancing, no news of how she did in school or journalism. No news of boyfriends, either, but I'd figured she probably had a few. I put down the envelope with hands that were shaky and numb. My heart was pounding harder than ever. For a moment I traced my fingers along the signature of her name, dry mouthed and unaware that my eyes had filled with tears.
Her little brother (Scotty) had been born with half a heart. I never knew the full extend of his medical condition, all I knew was, they had never expected him to live very long, but his determination proved to be stronger then anybody could imagine. Often times, I used to take him out on dates with Amber and me and at the fair I would win him stuffed animals. I guess in his latter years Scott's problems progressed and he was forced into a wheelchair and had to use oxygen tanks. He died on a Wednesday. His mother found him lying in bed and she swore for hours that he was only resting.
I never sent Amber a letter of apology. I wrote one but couldn't find the strength to send it. After that she never wrote back.
Months fell off the calendar, and before I knew it I was thirty-five, unwed, and stuck at a dead end job. My birthday came like a bullet to the head. It wasn't so happy to say the least. I got a call from my mother… my father had died. He went peacefully in his sleep. I caught a late flight to Michigan. Truthfully I wasn't in much of a hurry to see my father laying cold in a wooden box.
It was strange to be back home, especially for a funeral, and of all funerals my father's. He was an angel of mercy, always gave me a second chance. I approached my mother after the funeral. I let her hear my footsteps before they melted with the wind. Placing my hands on her shoulder I asked how she was. Tearful, she told me she was okay. We stood in silence for a while, listening to the cars pass on a distant highway. Then we made small talk, I asked her how all the relatives were; trying to avoid the real question I wanted to ask. After all, my father had just passed, all other problems seemed diminutive. But after a while I couldn't hinder it any longer.
"Mom… h-how has Amber been…? You know, since I left?"
She looked up at me, shocked and almost reluctant to speak.
"Amber… Amber passed, a few years back…"
Then it hits me like a kick in the nuts. It was cancer, lung cancer. She left behind two children and a husband. I sometimes dwell on the thought. I was the one that convinced her to start smoking. For that instant it wasn't as if I had last seen her sixteen years ago, weeping on her front porch steps, but as if she had always remained a friend, as close as a phone call or a trip up the street. I had nothing left to say, I just felt numb inside. My mind went off into distant worlds and I stared at the leaves changing on a tree for the longest time. The time I spent with her came and went in what seemed like a blank of an eye. But as we separated, time seemed to stop. Leaving me an eternity to mourn my loss… I left the place carrying a heavy burden on my shoulder. It was almost, more then I could take. I felt like my head was going to burst. So, I went to bed…
I decided to move back into town with my mother, I couldn't leave her alone. Sure I ended up having to go back, pick up my things and quit my job. But it was about time I left Florida anyway. I had run my life into a corner and was starting to crawl into the fetal position. Now don't get me wrong, I loved Florida but after long years of being there things begun to become repetitive. Besides, sand is overrated; it's just tiny little rocks…
I went for a walk on a fresh autumn evening, watching the leaves fall from looming skeletal branches. It was late afternoon, with red streaks cutting the late October sky, and the last remnants of the day were fading. The sky was slowly changing color, and as I was watching the sun go down, I remember thinking about that brief, flicking moment when the day suddenly turns into night.
Dusk, I realized then, it is an illusion, because the sun is neither above the horizon nor below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot co-exist at the same time. How would it feel, I remember wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart?
The constancy of the place brought back a flood of memories, and I felt my insides tighten as one by one I recognized landmarks I'd long since forgotten. A majestic willow tree on the banks of a river came into view next, and the memories became more intense. It looked the same as it had back then, branches low and thick, stretching horizontally along the ground with Spanish moss draped over the limbs like a veil. I remember sitting beneath that tree on a hot July day with someone who looked at me with a longing that took everything else away. And it had been at that moment that I'd first fallen in love.
It was odd, I knew that. I had grown up in Comstock, spent my first nineteen years here. But when I thought of Comstock, I seemed to only remember the time we spent together. Other memories were simply fragments; pieces here and there of growing up, and few, if any, evoked feeling.
I passed an old church, abandoned for years but still standing. Until I actually saw it, I hadn't realized how sure I'd been that it would have become a video-rental store or a sandwich shop or maybe a condominium. Instead it was exactly the same except the trim, now cream instead of green as if someone had once tried to rebuild. I recall exploring it once as a child. It was a dare, supposedly it was haunted but I never ran into any trouble other then a cobweb here and there. As I passed, I bowed my head and softly said a prayer. Not for myself though, I wished good fortune for my mother and the children of Amber.
Before I knew it, my legs carried me to a familiar street. It was almost as if a compulsion had driven me here. I stared down the road where broken sunlight shined through water oaks and hickory trees, illuminating the colors of fall. I could make out the shape of her house which she had inherited after her parents passed. For a moment I could almost make out the shape of two children playing in the leaves of the front lawn.
As I begun to close the distance between myself and the house, fallen leaves crunched beneath my feet, and my strides were barely longer then a pixy stick. A faint aroma of autumn leaves rode on the back of winds and hit me as I got closer, upon those winds voices came to me, 1993 ghost voices.
"You're ten and still playing with guns?"
"At least I'm not a nimrod! And I don't play Barbie like a little girl. Besides when I grow up I'm gonna be a magician and travel around with a carnival or circus, wearing a black suit and a black hat. You know, I'll pull rabbits and shit out of my hat."
"Rabbits will probably shit in your hat." I spoke the words, not declaiming them but not whispering them either, trying them on for size. I can't even remember what Amber had looked like, not with any real clarity at least. She is now but a shadow in my thoughts. Her face is darkened as if a light shines from behind her. I am not sure if this is due to failing memory or simply the passage of time. I have only one picture of her, and this too has faded. In another ten years it will be gone and her memory will be erased like a message in the sand.
The voices of the children became clearer as I closed the gap between us.
"You're gonna die!!" The little boy screamed out as he jumped on the girls back and dragged her into a pile of leaves. They fell in together, laughing and giggling.
The girl stood up with a big smile on her face, "NEVER! I'm gonna live forever! …or die trying…" Her voice innocent and dreamlike. Like a whisper, a light wind flowing through the trees. I stood still for a moment, my shadow lengthening into the street. She reminded me so much of her mother it almost made my stomach clinch.
"Ava!" Her father called from the front doorsteps. "Time to come in and clean up!"
She let out a profound sigh, "I need a new name, one that's not so worn out from being called so much." Turning to the boy she flashed a smile, "Bah bye! I have to go eat now."
As I watched her depart into the lamination of the house, I almost wanted to call out for her. I wanted to stop her, though I had nothing to say. I just wanted to be around her for a few seconds more. She looked just like her mother when we were kids. But I didn't, I just kept on walking…I have to remind myself that we were smaller then, small enough to live our brightly hued lives under the mushrooms, all the time believing them to be trees, shelter from the sheltering sky.
I walked the entire town that night, reminiscing on past events that photographs couldn't capture. The air was cool on my skin, almost crisp, and the sky was a haze of different colors: black directly above me like a mountain peak, then blues of infinite range, becoming lighter until it met the horizon, where gray took its place. Just like the winds of change I vanished into the silver twilight that preceded sunset.
My dreams are a cruel joke… They give me what I can't have, only to snatch it from me with the dawning of a new morning. I dream that I'm still with her. We lay before the fireplace with nothing on but the covers we were wrapped in. The room was silent, save the occasional crackle of fire. Outside it was cold as hell, as a majestic storm begun to approach… those poor cats n' dogs. The rain hugged the windowpane, in a slow vertical expenditure of malaises.
As the hall clock chimed the twelve hour, I started kissing at the back of her neck. Amber rolls over, looking up at me steadily. I stare back, watching the fire flicker in her eyes, a burning yearn we both hold deeply within the pit of our stomach to taste one another's sweat.
She reached out and ran her fingers along my chest, "There is nothing else in the world I want more right now, then your kiss." Then she brushed the hair back behind her ear, it was a gesture she made that I loved watching. She smiled and it hit me for about the millionth time how beautiful she was. I was thinking about how her skin felt, how her hair smelled, and how bright her eyes were in the firelight. Then she made a sudden whimper and I knew I loved her more then I'd ever loved anyone.
She's a goddess, my angel, sent from heaven to bestow on me endless bliss. If I could choose a heaven it would be to live all of the fantasies she held for me unto eternity. Her eyes fluttered open to reveal deep pools of hypnotizing sapphire which lit up my soul like the stars on a moonless summer night. She must have felt my passion in her dreams for her touch revealed a plan to quell my deepest desires. I looked deeply into her, drawn like a moth to a flame my lips became one with hers. The shadows, cast from her perfection, flickered in the fire light.
Sweet was the taste of our lust for each other. Her eyes, heavy with passion, closed once again; ever so slowly. I decided to prolong the kiss, and press slightly more, my lips to hers. She felt the increase in pressure, the fullest extent of my lips intertwined with hers and the warm feelings it stirred inside of her became more prevalent. Arms awoke from her sides and wrapped around my body. I returned the favor and continued to press harder against her. My whole body shuddered as its fate became the same as my lips, held fast against her like I belonged there from the very beginning. Her hands wound their way up my back caressing me and holding me at the same time. They found there way to my face and rested on my cheeks.
Her thumbs grazed the top of my ears as she pushed me away from her slightly. Our eyes opened simultaneously and we glanced into each others souls. I saw in her the ultimate lover and gentlewoman. Her spirit revealed truth. Untouched and untainted, it contained the perfection and clarity of the most valued diamonds in existence. Time slips away and becomes meaningless, the world became like our candle, we were the flame; it slowly melted around us as we burned throughout the night.
My dreams are a cruel joke… they taunt me. Even in my dreams I'm an idiot… who knows he's about to wake up to reality…
I woke up in a cold sweat and warm tears. The smell of her perfume lingered, long after I had awoke. I lay there for a second, watching shadows dance across the ceiling like distant tumbleweeds rolling across the desert. Lightning flashed outside my window, illuminating the room long enough to get a quick glimpse of my surroundings. In the quiet moments before the thunder, I thought I saw Amber standing in the doorway. The thunder finally sounded and I was alone again. I almost felt like I was still haunted by her presence, her smile, her smell, …my regrets… slowly I got up and made my way downstairs. My footsteps creaked as I walked down the cold wooden steps that descended into the living room.
I sat in the dark of the room as the moonlight pasted shadows of the cold winter rain falling outside my window. I felt like I was lost in a waken dream. Thunder boomed once more, breaking the stillness in the air. The storm in full fury, winds whipping the rain in circles. I feel Amber sitting beside me, staring out the window; watching the rain as we often did as kids. I can see her mirage, sitting there smiling at me, as she lay her hand on my knee. I mirror it back then shake her memory from my mind. My anger outweighs my grief. An impossible anger strangling grief until the memory of your loved ones are just… poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved, never existed at all…
As the hall clock chimed in the twelve hour, I could feel the hot breath of her whispers on the back of my neck. Silent whispers of the night; goodbye.
I visited her grave the next day. It was snowing and it took me forever to find. Now here I am, looming over her; silent as the trees. Nothing is more powerful then words written in stone. The wind gently blows as if whispering a secret in my ear; I close my eyes and listen; as a long cold tear runs down my face and lands on her name. I softly whisper.
"I've lain awake at night, thinking of you. …You know… that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, somewhere in the lost whispers of time, where it's only you and me."
Squatting down, I brushed the snow off her grave and placed a letter, yellow with age and with what seems like tearstains on it. "I think I would miss you, even if I'd never met you. I'd give up my tomorrow, just to hold you today. That's all I wish for, with all the years, months, weeks, days, and hours we had together. All I wish for is one more minute. But then again, that would just leave me; wishing for another… Well, I always have the next life."
Love unexpressed is a crime against the heart. She was the one in which I judged all others, and nobody came close. Slowly I stood up and walked away. Walked off into the distance, as my footsteps dwindled in the snow dust.