Postcards From No Man's Land

You slept in my bed. Beside me like a friend. Beneath me like a lover. Above me like a god. Around me like a shield.

You were none of these really, except for maybe my best friend. You were my brother.

You did not kiss me again. Things like that will fuck you up, Mikey, you said. You said it with a shadow in your eyes, a shadow I knew to be regret.

You didn't mean any of it, did you? I would ask.

Don't say that, you said, Of course I fucking meant it.

You never talked to me like that before. Impatience like waves, you wanted to drown me. Sharp edges and scratchy sand.

Then why do you regret it?

I saw the apologies in your eyes. Buried, like a secret. Buried in the sand. You looked so old then. Just so damn old, and I wondered just how long you'd been living. Eighteen years suddenly seemed much closer to one hundred.

It shouldn't have been this way, you said, and your voice was so tired. It was night, but I knew it wasn't because you were sleepy.

You told me that you thought we'd been together in past lives. Not always as a couple, but always together. We had been destined to know each other. But you said that one of us had fucked up really badly in one of those lives, and that was why we'd come back as brothers this time around. It shouldn't have been this way.

I was always afraid that it had been me who fucked up. Who'd fucked us up. Maybe I murdered you with a glimmering knife or a pistol. Maybe I raped you on sheets that were cold. Maybe I just left you, our children, or I divorced you. Maybe that was why we were sent back as brothers. You can't divorce your blood.

When I tried to tell you this once, you just shook your head and smiled. We were always together, Mikes, you told me. Like you knew. You just knew.

Maybe I was a pansy, I joked.

And you said, If you were a pansy, then I was the soil you grew in.

Then you kissed me, and it was only the second time. I counted all the others from that one night as a part of the first kiss. First kisses always last for more than you can count. Your eyes looked like the moon before it rains, clear and bright and almost molten. Lullaby kiss.

I do not regret it, you said, I only regret that I had to wait eighteen years to do it.

But we both knew that we'd had lifetimes before this one.

I guess you'd decided that fucking me up with a lifetime of kisses was a worthy risk. I was willing to pay that price.

And you placed your hand over the spot on my chest where my heart should be. Just a beat to the left of the center, folded beneath skin and bone and lean muscle. Palm over heart, it beat for you.

When you do bad things, you said, it can kill you. I'm just checking to make sure you're still alive.

I'm alive, my heart beat out.

I'm alive, my ragged lungs breathed.

I'm alive, my blood sang, being so close to your blood.

I was alive. Even though being bad could kill you, your heated palm over my wild heart told me I was still alive.