True Story 1

do you remember the night you called me, after having a gun shoved in your face

on the blacktop? face down, head turned to the side, crushing the pavement, holding your breath, eyes shut tight, this was it.  and it was not like some movie where life flashes by in clips of black and white and color.  it was just people--that you know, that you have known, that you wanted to know again.  i had been lost in your memory for some time. the me, when i was still light inside.  the me, when smiling didn't seem to hurt so much.  you said, you wanted to hear my voice.  i said,  i wanted to not feel gutted when you said my name like it meant something to you.  life is too short and time is a bullshit excuse for turning away, but i can't stop running.  i picture you on your bed, but the only image i have of you is from three years ago.  i try to picture you as a man, maybe taller, maybe harder.  we speak through the phone like strangers.  how is this so when i used to read your body like a map with my fingertips?  i imagine the gun going off, your blood spread thick on the concrete and i know that i would have died too--in black and white and in color. hope is always your smile in that photograph of us on the beach when we were too young to realize that the world was burning up.  i told you i would come home if you asked me to, and then the silence, like the questions we never answer, like the gaps we never fill.  i was never enough to keep you still.  rather, you were in and out of the state, the country, your mind...  and now you call to hear my voice but it isn't really enough to break your heart or move your feet.  so i breathe slowly and say i'm sorry.  my voice is stretched tight like the phone cord beneath the door. i draw my knees into my chest, my back against the bricks in the hallway, and i can smell your house like i was sixteen with the world hanging upside down and butterflies in my stomach.  the only fluttering i can hear now is my heart--fight or flight.  you didn't fight tonight, which kept you alive.  i fought everyday after you left to keep you in the palm of my hand, etched into my life line......which kept me broken.  i have the scars to remind me.  i start to cry because i am not this person and you almost died and the ocean is so far away and the bed is lonely and your voice is heavy.  you said you'd call and i knew you wouldn't.  we said i love you like it was different, as if our lives could still talk to one another like they used to...