Not This Time

Don't Drop Your Arms, I'll Guard Your Heart

She ate strawberries and milk for breakfast every morning. She had a sun tattooed on her middle finger and spoke perfect Russian. She wore forest green tights and baggy shirts with wolves on them. She made the best lasagna this side of the Mississippi river and never watched any television on Thursdays. She danced en pointe to the Jackson 5 in our living room and she fed our dog with cat food. She wore her hair in a braid on the weekends and called me on all of my shit. She loved me.

And in the blink of an eye, she was gone. All because I took my eyes away from the road, just to look at her and admire the fact that she was mine. Just for a second.

A second is long enough to kill someone.

Sometimes I wake to the sound of glass shattering. Not always, but enough to haunt me. I still get to wake up, go to work, eat lunch, and have conversations with people. I get to worry about that promotion I'm up for, whether Buddy peed on the rug again, if the garage needs cleaning. She doesn't get to have any of that and it's my fault.

If I had just listened and kept my eyes on the road, I would have seen the red light. I would have hit the brakes, laughed as she squeaked from the seatbelt cutting her momentum off. There wouldn't have been any shattering glass, no sick and twisted crunching of bones, no visions of skulls snapping at unnatural angles. Firemen's coats wouldn't have a negative connotation. I wouldn't be afraid to drive and she wouldn't be dead.

Death. It's a concept that can't be understood unless it's up close, right inside your head and your heart and your whole sense of being. You can't feel it from a distance, you can't know what it means to lose someone until you've done it yourself. And even then, you can't understand the guilt. You think you do - I should've done this, said this, acted like this - but you don't. When it comes down to the wire, you weren't the reason they died. You didn't kill them, didn't create the cells that stole their body or their mind. But I did. I killed her and I have to live knowing that.

A car accident is always someone's fault. If someone is drunk, they are to blame. If someone is speeding, they are to blame. If someone runs a red light, they are to blame. There's no way around it, no way to soften the blow. A car accident that ends in a fatality always has a responsible party. Someone always has to carry the weight of causing another person's death. It's bad enough when that person is a stranger, but it's infinitely worse when it's a friend or a family member or a lover. It's enough to drive someone mad, if they think about it too much.

I sit on the bed and stare at the wall, brush my fingertips over the barrel and weigh the decision I'm about to make. Maybe this will even the score. She might not even want to see me after what I did to her, after what I'm considering doing to myself. Will I still get into heaven if I kill myself? I don't know.

I point the gun at my temple and ask myself the question again.
♠ ♠ ♠
With quiet words, I'll lead you in and out of the dark.