Two Boats

Let's go to the beach, so the other boys can see what they are missing.

Let's take a drive.

Ok.

We sit on the hood in the early morning light and talk about where to go.

Let's just go North until the F turns into an E...

Ok.

We kiss until the highway beckons us to join it.

I brought a boombox so we can listen to some music, I know your stereo is busted.

What do you want to listen to?

Yo La Tengo sounds good right now.

You are obsessed with them.

Is that bad?

No, it's endearing.

You know what's endearing about you?

What?

Everything?

The road winds and the conversation ebbs and flows like the water in the ocean we are circling.

Let's buy a boat.

Ok.

What will be name it?

Let's name it after my Grandma.

What about my Grandma?

Ok. Let's buy two boats.

A motorboat?

And a sailboat too.

Muscle Memory

He lay flat on his back. He felt a wetness over his lip and knew it wasn't over. He pressed the tissue against his nose and stared at the blood. He looked up at the ceiling again. He created constellations out of the Spackle marks. He heard her step out of the shower in the next room and he thought about what she looked like naked. He loved her but wasn't in love with her.

He had a flash of his ex-lover standing in a dingy blue towel in the doorway of his old apartment. She rested her hand on the off-white dry wall and said "let's go down to the lake today". She put on her earrings and dropped the towel as she walked back into the bathroom.

He sighed and felt his upper lip. He looked down at his finger, it was a dirty red.

"Let's maybe go to the lake today", he called out to her.

"What? You know we're having lunch with Mark and Marlena. I mean...I can ask if they want to-"

"Forget it", he said, "I'm just being stupid".

He sat up slightly and turned his head to look out the window. It was overcast and wet, but not raining.

Maybe

We said goodbye next to an open car door in the rain. The small Mexican woman taking a smoke break on the sidewalk next to us smiled. That old 4 Non-Blondes song came on the radio as you leaned in to kiss me and you laughed. I said, "it's like we are saying goodbye in 1995 or something".

As I'm writing all of this down, a girl who looks like you walks past the window of the restaurant I'm sitting in. She reminds me that that goodbye was the last time we spoke.

I instantly wonder how you are, where you are...if you're even alive. Maybe you cut your hair and changed your name and I see you everyday but I just don't realize it. Maybe that's what happens after we die. Perhaps my Grandfather is now that kid down at the corner store who always tried to short change us or maybe your Mom is the waitress who just brought me a refill. Maybe she'll lean over and say to me, "don't worry, Mary is fine. She's now an 8 year old with an above average reading comprehension who loves horses living in Montana". Maybe the switch is made when we've lost all hope, those moments when we die on the inside, just a little, that's when someone new takes over. Maybe that's just what happened to you. You aren't really dead, just that part of you that I said goodbye to on that rainy day in front of your beat-up Skylark.