“Sometimes I sit on the lounge and turn the TV off, let the silence fill my ears. He’s gone. He will always be gone. The screen feels like a black hole, one I can never see the center of, sucking me in – until I am nothing too.”
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I won’t say goodbye.

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The mattress shifts under the weight of him as he sits next to me. I am half dressed, waiting until i’ve finished my make up to put on my shirt.

He lays a hand on my knee. I turn to look at him.

He doesn’t tell me we’re going to be late, he doesn’t tell me that I always make us late – he just raises his hand from my knee to rest against my cheek and moves in to place a kiss on my temple.

I let my eyes close and clench my fingers to my palms. When both reopen he is gone and I am alone again.

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I am seated at your kitchen bench, my legs slightly folded under themselves to balance the arches of my feet on the stool beneath me. My elbows take the weight of my head cradled in my hands as I watch you put a kettle over one of the hot plates on your cooktop. 

Your movements are always so fluid and graceful, sometimes it takes all I have just to stop watching you quietly going about your day. And right now, sitting here, I just want to thank you for making me feel like I don’t always need to fill all the quiet spaces with pointless words. I just want to thank you for making going about my own day that little bit easier.

——

We lay side by side on a king sized bed – it feels too big, like I’m losing you to blankets and sheets. Your head comes up from the pillow to look at me and smile. Your eyes are diamonds. 

“I’m proud of you, bird.” My hand searches across mountains and oceans just to rest next to yours. “I’m proud to know you.” 

Your pinky hooks around mine and you squeeze. We each take a deep breath, let them stretch our insides then send them on their way.

I shift to lay on my side, looking for you between pillows; pressing a corner of one down I find you staring up at the ceiling. You glance at me briefly from the corner of your eyes, and I watch your mouth slowly pull up at each side. Making you smile will always be my most favourite accomplishment. 

——

We are cradling warm cups of hot chocolate, huddled together near the fire whilst we roast our toes. We share a grin over the tops of our mugs and it turns in to a little laugh. I always picture us laughing, just enough for our teeth to peek out from behind our lips – just enough to fill us with the warmth that comes from knowing you’re a perfect fit for someone else. 

One of your strays rubs up against me; the vibration from its purr rattling my bones, lulling me in to that comfortable soap suds feeling. Intricate, soft, blues guitar solos float across the room settling on us like a blanket. I always thought it was funny how good music makes you feel like you’re drunk – giddy, bursting with love, buzzing and warm all over. Maybe it’s just this minute – frozen in thought slowly leaking in to memory.

——

Maybe, if we can’t be together in real life, we can live here.

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I study my wrinkled hands, closing them in to fists and releasing them again; trying to remember every place they’d been. Manipulating pencils, climbing trees, punching numbers, devouring wrapping paper, curled around drum sticks, hiding under girls’ skirts, pummelling mens’ cheekbones, holding new born children, messing up hair, tracing the the keys of a piano.

“Dad?”

Junie enters the hospital room holding a bunch of fresh wild flowers, “Mom wanted me to bring you these.”

I gather my strength and push my palms in to the mattress, bringing myself up to a sitting position, groaning without meaning to – like all older people do. She rushes to my side, grabbing an elbow, “Dad, you have to take it slow,” She pats my pillow a few times and lowers me back against it, “You’re not 21 any more.”

21. When I had it all figured out. I grunt in reply and take a few short breaths in, trying to calm my hammering heart. There were days I could run 10 miles, now I’m lucky to be able to make it to the toilet and back without needing a rest.

“Are your brothers coming by?” I take a sip of the water she offers me, the straw gets stuck on my lip as she pulls the glass away and a few drops fall on the grey hairs scattered across my chest.

She turns to open the curtains and I squint in the sunlight, “Shep’s in Houston, but Abe might come by later.”

My breath hitches like it’s tripping up a flight of stairs and Junie shoots me a worried look, “Do you need your oxygen?”

I shake my head and cough a few times, waving her away when she brings the face mask towards me, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

There’s a knock at the door and it opens a few inches, Junie looks up and I can tell it’s no one she knows, “Sorry, I… I was looking for Zac.”

I can’t think of any one whom I would know that my children wouldn’t, so I close my eyes and feign sleep in presumption that it’s a nurse come to poke me with useless needles.

Junie goes to the door and slips through it quietly, bringing it shut slightly behind her. “He’s sleeping right now, can I help you?”

“I was hoping to speak to him, it’s ok, I’ll come back another time.” The voice sounds like an old record, scratchy and worn; but playing a tune you’d know any where.

“Does he know you?”

My chest feels as if a car is parked on it and I struggle to speak, “Junia,” It doesn’t carry far enough and I listen to the other woman back peddle and eventually leave.

I am clutching fistfuls of sheets when she reenters, “Dad?”

“Who was that?” My throat is filled with gravel.

“Probably just another one of your stalkers.” She tries to lighten the mood, but my heart is burning a hole through my ribs and I can’t manage to find anything humorous about the situation.

“No, Junie, who was that?” My eyes search hers, she looks confused.

“I don’t know, a woman, around your age I guess, she didn’t tell me her name… Why? Have you been hiding a mistress from Mom all these years?” She smiles, placating me, and rubs the back of my hand careful not to knock my IV. Her fingertips feel like silk as they travel over the bones straining against my leathery skin; she is an automatic comfort and I feel my insides start to settle, forgetting my agitation.

I think about when I could fit her in the crook of my elbow. How perfect she was, and how I never longed for any thing more. Time had such a way of equalising the world; whether you were always thinking about it or too busy to care – it passed for every one just the same.

“Hey,” I grab her hand in mine, “You’re not going to sell off all my collectables when I die are you?”

She lets a laugh escape and if I could watch her do that for an eternity I would. “Dad, what the hell?”

“Because I’m counting on you. Those boys, they don’t care – but I know you do. You’ll keep them for me, won’t you?” I squeeze her fingers and she squeezes mine back. She blinks slowly at me, the way her mother does, and nods. “Ok, sure.”

“You’re a good sport Junie.” My eyelids start to feel heavy, I take a deep breath in and prepare to slip from consciousness for a while. As it does these days, the urge to sleep comes along with little warning and does not need much convincing to have it’s way.

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and the salt in my wounds isn’t burning anymore than it used to
it’s not that i don’t feel the pain, it’s just i’m not afraid of hurting anymore.

She clipped the dressing with some scissors and anchored it against his wrist with a bandage clip.

“This one will take a few days to heal.” At times she wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth, or if it was her subconscious trying to keep him around just a little longer.

He wrapped his hand over it to make sure it was secure and grinned at her, “Harry Potter Movie Marathon?”

She rolled her eyes, pouring more antiseptic solution on to a cotton pad and getting to work on the cuts across his forearm. “Don’t worry about them, they’re only small, they’ll heal on their own.”

“Every wound’s important, small cuts get infected just as easy as big cuts,” She murmured, concentrating on removing the small pieces of gravel from his scratches. 

The door bell rang and she looked up, “Here, just keep wiping those,” She handed him the cotton pad and climbed up from her knees using the lounge as leverage. 

Sam leaned back on the couch to take a peek down the hallway at the front door – there stood a young guy in jeans and a leather jacket holding flowers in his left hand; Sam turned away when a glint of sunlight hit the wedding ring on the intruder’s finger, and reminded him he was being openly intrusive.

Returning to his wounds, he pretended he’d been doing so all along when she walked back in to the room. “Any one important?” He feigned nonchalance. 

She leaned over him, checking for more scrapes, finding too many forgotten bruises still healing, “An old friend.” He tried not to flinch when her fingertips grazed an open cut. 

“An old boyfriend?” He raised an eyebrow, looking to gauge her reaction.

She sighed, “Kind of.” Pushing his hair back from his forehead she hung it behind his ear. She was so close all he could smell was her – vanilla and cinnamon sugar.

“He’s married…?” It came out and fell in the space between a statement and a question, where there is an infinite gap separating what’s wrong and right. 

She finished dressing the lesion and stood, looking down at him slightly defensive, “Maybe I’m just a sucker for boys that never stay.”

Sam placed his palms over his knees and with a slight rock forward for momentum managed to propel himself upright; she stifled a small breath in as he towered over her, “I’m not a boy.”

He said it with such conviction, like that was the most important part of what was wrong with her statement. She caught herself before her head shook in disbelief.

Their eyes held for a moment before she moved aside, cleaning up and packing away the First Aid Kit. She was placing the gauze in to a snap lock bag when she glanced up at him quickly with a flick of her eyelids, indulging him in a smile, “And excuse me, but, when exactly did we start talking about you?”

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Carnation Ch.2:

merryweathervane:

He fumbled for the next thing to say.

She was resting her head in the crook of his neck and was sitting so quietly he almost thought she was asleep. That was until she stirred.

He held her more tightly for the most part because he was inclined but also because he didn’t want her to fall off the…

Where are we going?

Soulmates. I see it now.

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“I love that you drive several miles out of town just to get a good coffee. I love that you think you can get a better gauge of someone from looking at a photo of them in black and white rather than colour. I love that you make everyone feel like it’s ok just to be themselves. I love that you have a million computers that don’t work. I love that you buy digital copies of books to read and then end up buying hard copies just because you feel like they’re more authentic. I love that you still put your index finger and thumb in the shape of an L to work out which is left and right. I love that I don’t know how the hell you manage in day to day life with the worst luck I’ve ever seen a person have. I love that you have a dog called Phil, but that most of the time you call him by any other word you can think of. And they’re stupid ones, like Muffin and Babushka! He probably doesn’t even know his actual name is Phillip! You drive me crazy and yet I can think of no better days than the ones I spend with you.”

I struggle to process what’s happening, but I manage to gather that Zac is standing in front of me, uncomfortably yet emphatically listing off things he’s noticed about me, things he loves about me. It is uplifting and earth shattering in exactly the same moment, in exactly the same amount.

“This is… A lot… To think about.” I am suddenly acutely aware of myself, sliding a hand through my hair I avoid looking at him.

I’d never had someone tell me things they love about me before, let alone list them out and expect me to respond afterwards with understanding. Who ever in the world really thought the weird things about them were going to be not just accepted, but honestly loved?

“Why would you tell me all this?” My voice is small or maybe the room is too big.

“Because I couldn’t not tell you any more.” I let my eyes graze his lips, and in doing so realise his shoulders seem lighter. The worst part is that now mine are aching.

"You shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here, alone, together. It’s not right.” I try to push him towards the door but he is a thousand pounds of muscle resisting my weak advances.

“Why? We do this all the time! We’re friends!”

“Friends? After what you just told me?” I slam a flat palm in to his shoulder.

“It doesn’t change how we are, you just know how I feel now.”

“Exactly! It’s out there, in the world, it’s every where. Just go!” I give him one final shove out the door and close it quickly behind him. For a second I imagine the whole thing never happened.

I realise I hadn’t lied – for days after, it was every where; every thing I did I caught myself wondering if he loved this about me too, every time I closed my eyes I saw him filling up the hall way, waiting expectantly for an answer, his eyes wide with something I hadn’t ever seen in them before – he had set his gaze on me, with what only looked like hope.

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I watch in complete stillness as his fingertips lift up and down over the fret board of his guitar, I had always known he had come from a musical background, but I never realised just how perfect the sounds he could create from scratch really were. 

“What song is that? Is it it yours?”

“Yeah, I thought of calling it ‘Sunlight’.” His thumb rolls down across the steel strings over the sound chamber.

“But it sounds so cold.” I can still feel it in my bones.

“You can’t know something without knowing the absence of it as well." 

We sit for a moment and I let that sink in. I remember a lesson from school about there being no such thing as cold, just the absence of heat. 

For a split second I think of Zac’s chest pressed to my back, the warmth I felt emanate from him, the way it spread like wild fire to my fingers and toes. 

I shut my eyes tight, trying my hardest to shake him off me. 

Isaac packs his guitar away and slides the case back under the bed like something to be ashamed of.

"You never told me what happened, why you stopped playing.” I look to him, trying to read if I have upset him in any way by asking. His hands are curled over the edge of the bed, shoulders up around his ears. He continues to stare at his bare feet. 

“We just weren’t getting along. Zac said some pretty heartless things to me, Taylor sided with him, as always… And we decided if the three of us wanted to remain brothers we would have to stop being bandmates.”

“Oh.” I feel sick all of a sudden. I had never known or thought Zac to be heartless; I wondered what else I didn’t know about him. “Do you think it’s capable of being repaired?”

“He said sorry,” Isaac shrugs, “They both did.”

“But that doesn’t mean it hurt any less.” I finish for him, I realise I’d seen this inadvertently whenever it had just been the three of them together. I had taken it for introversion, but now I see it is defeat; a feeling that almost always comes when you have no choice but to love someone in spite of the way they make you feel about yourself. 

He turns to me, sliding a bent knee on to the mattress, his foot still hanging over the edge. He smiles, “It’s ancient history.”

I raise an eyebrow, “You know, whenever someone says that, it’s never ancient history.”

“They’re my brothers. I love them.” He settles back in to himself.

I give him a look, “Sweeping things under the rug just gives you more things to trip over.”

Laughing, he leans forward to plant a kiss on my forehead, “I’m clumsy anyway, so it won’t make a difference.”

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I’ve imagined myself with a child recently. The moments come about like memories, at insignificant times – when I am brushing my teeth, when I am in the middle of reading a sentence, when I am waiting for the coffee to brew. 

The first was when I imagined having a small boy calling me his mother. It was in his eyes, the way he seemed to just know me. I saw his chubby little arms, the crook of each elbow. I had lifted him on to my hip, his head had fallen against my collar bone.

The second was a daughter. Around 5, maybe older. She was sitting on the counter top in my bathroom, she was wearing no shoes – I had noticed because she was throwing her legs about. I was leaned over the sink, my face inches from the mirror applying mascara. She watched like it was magic. 

The third was the same daughter, 5 years on. I was standing in the doorway to her room. Just looking. Just trying to trace back how I got here. I had aged a decade and yet never moved. I stood for hours at that door, letting it sink in; I am her mother. 

At times I feel as if these imaginary children are waiting for me some where. Asking me to come to them. Promising me lifetimes. I catch myself in those moments, suspended in time, before my heart gives one painful throb and the world floods back in; everything is as it was. And I remember that these children deserve better than me. 

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