Our Last Drive

 
The hot evening wind whips your hair about
as your hide-the-eyes sunglasses block out the dust and sun.
You look like a Hollywood icon, or maybe some Bond girl on the run.

The top’s down on the midnight blue Miata you picked and paid for yourself
just in time for the Cancer to make you a passenger in yet another aspect of your life.

It’s been a long winter
with chemo, radiation, and heart palpitations that were really myocardial infarctions and a sign we didn’t have much time left.

We didn’t know it but that last drive was it – the last of a life with still too many days left unlived.
We swoosh around the curves like we’re riding waves
though we were always both too afraid to go out past the breakers.
The sand closer to shore always felt safer, even with jellyfish stings and crab claw toe pinches.

A dusty rose falls all around us as day gives way to night.
The mid-March humidity dissipates with the sunset and we hit a straightaway of smooth sailing.
No cars are ahead in the distance or in the rear view –
just our two high beams breaking up the fading light.

This road, this asphalt sea, is ours as the night rolls in behind us.
We miss our turn twice but keep on driving.
People are at the house waiting, but you’re not ready to turn around.
After all, the streetlights haven’t come on yet.

The darkness is a high tide rolling in above us as we sink beneath the surface in silence.
We know the road is going to end sooner than we expected or hoped.
We had no idea the next day this moment and you would be another memory in my mind to hold onto rather than  your tan, freckled hand with knobby knuckles and slender fingers I’d know anywhere.

We lose time as we drive along the back roads of our lives.

We don’t dare interrupt this moment where what will be and what has been don’t exist – just what is.

I steal a peek at you, huddled next to me, arms wrapped tight, holding yourself in one piece against the cooling air. I switch on the heat, redirect the blast to our feet so it isn’t lost in the night, and watch happiness spread across your lips, cheeks, your body as if you were standing in the bright warmth of a high noon, deep south July sun.

This snapshot of you lives in perfect polaroid detail in my memory palace among the many shrines I’ve built to you.

Eventually, we make our way back home, and though we didn’t know you were leaving the next day, we both knew the second we locked blue-eye-to-blue-grey-eye there would be no more top-down drives in our future.

Sometimes I can still feel the hum in my bones of the tires meeting the road, riding into darkness like we did so many years ago – you sitting by my side, forever glamorous in sunburst yellow and leopard print.

I’ll never know what it’s like to live so loudly without ever saying a word.

We Live Twice

 Egyptians believed we died twice.

First, our bodies withered into dust

and nourished the spaces around us.  

Then, our spirits slipped away
when others stopped saying our names.

I believe we live twice. 

Once until our hearts stop.

And once until our memories are lost - 

not just our names, not just our legacies,

but the rooms of our loved ones' memory palaces

we reside in until oblivion.

When we are no longer remembered,

we are no more.

It may seem the same - 

living and dying with the grave

and your name.

But it isn't - 

it'll never be about how you die.

It's about your life,

and how you lived it.

May your second life

be immortal.

Burning Out

No one sees how dark it is

because I turn on every light

when they come around

like this is how I live

the minutes in my life. 

It's easier to put on a show

than lie to make them feel

better

safe

or like we're all okay.

I'd rather pretend,

make it seem okay

than say the words out loud.

The lies are always easiest

to believe, to hear

but never to tell.

The truth is

the lights are burning out

one-by-one,

and soon

you'll see

what it's like for me.

Was It Real?

Do you carry me with you

in your memory palace,

or am I lost in the sea of thoughts

you refuse to think again?

I believed I mattered to you,

that 23 years meant something

and you couldn't do to me

what you did to everyone else.

But it's been almost 4 years

since I've heard your laugh,

your excitement about new projects,

your worries about problems

you helped create.

Did I imagine it?

The heartache reminds me

it was real

even if you try to pretend

it wasn't.

I was there.

I remember.

Do you?

In Another Time

I had a dream

we were together,

laughing and smiling

in ways we never did.

Maybe that's us

in another world,

a parallel universe

where being together

created positivity

instead of the toxicity

we lived.

I hope so.

It gives me peace

to believe

somewhere,

in some other time

and place, 

I'm happy

and loved.

Moments

I counted the days

you were here

and it was only 3 months more

than her - 

29 years just the same

and never enough either way. 

I don't know

why you had to leave

or where you went

but I hope

I'll see you again.

If not in this life,

in the next.

Two of my favorite souls

slipped through my fingers

like the wind,

wispy sighs no one

can touch

or hold.

I imagine

every whisk and whirl

is your arms

wrapping around

my shoulders

like all the hugs

I'll never have again. 

And for a moment,

a breath,

there is nothing but love.

Thirty-Two Minutes

Our footsteps crunch on the sand-covered cement
as you shove your calloused fingers deep into the folds of your pants,
hiding in safety from the chance of touching my side.
We walk straight to where the road bends to the right.

The embers burn orange at the end of your cigarette as you take another drag in silence. 
Only your teeth brim the velvet darkness from a moonlit sky.

An unseen creature runs in front of our footsteps.

We feel him for a moment before he scampers off to the left.

My eyes wander up to the diamond sky as it winks and twinkles at us with mischief

like there's something else going on but we missed it.  

The crisp air clears my sinuses like a mint and I feel the sticky salt air cling to my skin.

I focus on the words suddenly falling out of your mouth, 
letting the syllables take shape in my brain. 

Before I know it, my watch tells me thirty-two minutes have gone by

since you told me I was the one you'd looked for all your life.

I ask myself, "why thirty-two minutes ago was so different

from all the thirty-two minutes of the five years you've let go?"

I keep waiting for the cocoons to hatch in my stomach again, 

for the familiar butterflies to emerge and begin their flight

like they have ever since the moment we met.

But nothing happens. 

I listen to see if the world has stopped spinning – if time has stilled –

and wait as you speak of "when" and "until" as if I haven't said those words

so many times before, losing battles to you but still keep fighting the war

so you’ll stay in my life as something, anything, hoping this winter will lead to a spring.

And now you're waving the white flag at me telling me that you finally see I am the one?

Again you say I am the woman of your dreams like I’m not reacting the way you imagined.

I hear you. I'm listening, but something is wrong,

and I see that the moment is gone like all the years before it went – silent.

I know you better than you’ve ever known me and though you’re saying the words

I’ve wanted to hear for hours, days, months, years,

they’re just letters strung together with no evidence to prove you feel what you say you do. 

Maybe it’s not what you expected but finally, I get it –
Underneath this ebony sky another day is going by like every other day we’ve lived –

both together and apart –

and I see that thirty-two minutes have passed since the dream of us became a part of our past.

Your loneliness led you here, not your heart,

and if I was really the girl you’ve dreamed of your whole life,

you would’ve known at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, or even twenty

like you do now at twenty-one.

I’m not your fantasy.

I never have been –

I’m just the one person still standing in the wreckage you’ve made of your life

and what you said thirty-two minutes ago doesn’t disguise the reality we live in.

We’ll be friends until we know better.