Ten Years Late.
July 6, 2009
Ten years ago this month, your skin in ash-blue pucker, flattened veins surface-close, I cried on the shoulder of the all-star volleyball jock who, if we were still in school, wouldn’t have held my hand and passed me a Kleenex when your mother, stone faced and sure, said you were happier now.
Lid wide open in a roomful of us just starting out, we saw the rope burn left behind when you swung from your parents’ open concept vaulted ceiling second floor railing banister.
It’s been so long since you and I drank a water bottle full of liquor we stole from the pick-locked cabinet in the camping trailer parked on the front drive, playing poker for shots, scrunching our face after each burning shit-mix swig.
It’s been so long since you called late at night, us both whispering in the dark into coil cord phones, for dating advice, telling me you were in love with my best friend, asking how to win her over even though it meant giving advice I’d wished you’d use to win me over.
It’s been so long since we camped in the woods with twelve of our friends and stayed up late under summer stars passing a bottle and a joint, talking about the way things would be when we got the fuck out of this shit-small town and really started living.
It’s been so long since you turned to me in biology class and mouthed that song, the one that went “la-de-la, this year will be better than the last…,” the corners of your lips upturned in smirk.
It’s been so long since you hurt yourself the first time; since you let the light fade to dark in your head; since you stopped calling; since you turned inward on yourself; since you got farther and farther away, the length of my arms no longer enough to connect me to you.
It’s been so long since I walked away from your shadow body, snot-wet tissues crumpled in shaking palms; since I got the fuck out of that shit-small town; since I starting making every year better than the last.
It’s been so long since I thought of you early in the morning; clouds ten years late heavy with the tears shed for a life gone too soon.
It’s been so long since I thought of you and said: it was selfish leaving us that way.
xoxo,
M.L. H’art
