Written: in college! I’ve been enjoying my Saturday too much to write anything worthwhile, so here’s a little throwback from a college writing class
Powered by: oh man, what was I even like in college? Stella & pizza, probably
Inspired by: in North Carolina in the summer, it gets so hot that worms burn onto the sidewalk, and I just thought that was important somehow
After you tell me, we don’t speak. Instead, we hunch together on the porch because I don’t want you to come inside. Sunday afternoon heat lays heavy on our shoulders. You clasp your fingers together between your knees and duck your head forward like a prayer so I watch the sky for God, but when nothing changes I say, “I’m happy for you.”
You don’t look at me. “Don’t you ever say what you mean?” you ask your fingers.
“Only when it would make a difference.”
You shift away from me and the wooden planks beneath you creak in response, begging us to listen to them. You twist to face the house.
“That screen needs replacing,” you gesture towards the rusting front door. I don’t mention that you promised to fix it yourself, back when I was young and this house was new to us.
The screen door was on a long mental list you tallied of all the things you would fix so we could “start a life together right,” including replacing the windows and cladding the roof. Including you. Including me.
“I’ll tell Jack,” I let the words hit you and almost don’t feel a thing about it.
“Right,” your voice is strained, “When will he be home?” I tell you tonight. I let you think that Jack sleeps here, that he has a toothbrush on my sink, that I am serious about Jack and not that Jack is simply there.
“I should go,” you tell me, but nothing moves. Sitting next to you it feels as though nothing has moved in years.
I remember a time when my greatest fear was a life without you but even when you left I’d find you every couple of months, waiting on the front porch until I pushed the door open. I stopped believing in things when I was fourteen, but I believed in you. My only conviction was that you would show up on my front porch eventually if I could just be patient.
“What else can I do,” you reason with me even though I never asked for an explanation. “There’s lots of bad I’ve done, but I won’t abandon a kid. I wouldn’t do that.” And I know that I will never see you on this porch again.
In front of us, I watch the worms crawling, stubbornly, despite the sun beginning to boil them from the outside in. They pass the carcasses of their brothers and sisters who have already fried in the sun, their bodies crooked smiles decorating my walkway. You tune in to my silence until we are both watching the same thing, both aware of the way our arms are almost touching, both comfortable with it and trembling.
“You think maybe they would learn,” you tell me, “You think they should know better.”
It makes me angry, that you can watch them hurting and say it’s their own fault. “Well maybe they can’t help it.” the words come out too hard. You hesitate before reaching for my hand and I hesitate before taking it away.
For the first time you look at me. Your voice is hoarse and when I realize how weary you are I almost pull you inside where you can rest with me.
“What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking that I understand the worms. I understand their love of the sun, their longing to see it again, to feel it wrap around them so close it becomes another layer of them. The way it could burn them and they wouldn’t mind. I understand thinking you can handle it. I understand loving something even as it kills you.
You close your eyes when my fingers reach your cheek, spread across you like a blessing. Your face is so dry that it’s flaking in places, ruddy from the sun, and I hate that the only part of you I can touch anymore is that first layer of your skin, already dead and waiting to shed. I press into you more, trying to get past what you once were towards what is new, what has never been felt before.
Numbly I flex my fingertips, and the quick prick of my nails makes you flinch away from me and open your eyes. Your stare is wild and I’m looking right back, showing you that no one will love you like this again.