Colby Come Home

One year, two months, seven weeks and fourteen days. That’s how long it’s been since Colby’s set foot inside our cozy Casablanca. His sneakers still have dirt coating their white sides and his jacket is still hanging above them in the hallway closet. His garments are still packed haphazardly in the dresser that’s been untouched for so long. The blue silk pillow he had imported from Italy is still propped on his side of the bed - where the sheets that he slept in our still unmade and crinkled from the last time he entangled himself in them. There are a pair of dirty socks that are huddled together under the nightstand that I can’t make myself wash. I’ve gotten close dozens of times - they’ve been there for more than a year now and the bedroom’s starting to smell faintly of a locker room - but every time I stare and bend down and run my fingertips over the cotton, I can’t do it. I stand back up and breath deeply and will the tears away.

I stare down at my chipping nails and listen as a newscaster rants on about the presidential campaigns. I can’t help but wonder where Colby is and if he’s okay and if he’s being tortured by the enemies who I doubt are really our enemies. I don’t understand why we have to send so many damn soldiers - so many men with wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and sisters and children - out into the deserted land that we declared an infinite battleground. It makes me sick, and as I stand up to make myself coffee, I hear a click admit from the TV and when I look back a man, clad in uniform, gazes into my living room. I plop back down, hoping with everything I’ve salvaged that he’ll announce in a harsh voice that the men are coming home. I twiddle my thumbs and kick my bare feet against the maroon rug as I wait for him to say something.

And when he does, a few seconds later, I fall to my knees while my heart drops in sync.

“An Improvised Explosive Device was set off approximately three hours ago in a military base situated in Afghanistan. We’re announcing the names of the dead on live television due to the horrible impending amount of deceased soldiers. We pray for these men who risked their life’s for our country and their families in grievance.” He salutes with his right hand before looking down at a piece of paper held in the left. “This is the list of men who have died today, I pray your family member isn’t one of them.” And then he goes off to list names and I pray with him that he won’t say Colby’s name.

I doubt he even knew Colby; I wonder if he even was in combat or is just the correspondence of the Army to the public. I assume the latter. But all thoughts get drained from my brain as he devolves deeper into the names’ of the dead.

Austin Dagger. Adam Diger. Bruno Salvage. Dylan Austins. Noah Brinks. Jeremy Links. Jeremiah Deaton. Don Jackson. Colby Granger.

Colby Granger.

Granger, Colby.

Colby Anthony Granger.

A high pitched, guttural scream rips from my esophagus and tares into the midday. I collapse even farther into the ground and clutch at my erratic heart. I can feel it beating faster and faster as realization sets in and makes itself home in my bones, and I know I’ll never see Colby again. I won’t know what he looked like right before he died, I won’t know if he learned to like meatballs and I won’t get to hear if his voice got deeper. I’ll forever remember him as he was a year younger; like his life polarized itself and that’s the only time I ever knew him. The pictures that sprawl against my walls and stand on shelves will be the only pictures I ever have; the only way he’ll ever look again.

I let tears cascade down the curves of my cheeks and folds of my mouth as I clutch at myself harder. I want so badly to melt and disappear into the floorboards that Colby’s feet used to walk on.

The only thing I have left of him is the sneakers that go untouched in the closet. The bedside that will never be made again - the side I’ll sleep on until I get over him - which will be almost impossible to do because Colby wasn’t someone you could forget easily. His smile was etched into your memory the second you saw it. His voice was in your ears and his heart was in your hands.

The clothes that I’ll smell days afterwards as I try to remember when he wore them. The socks that will go unwashed; that will start to mold against my bedroom carpet. But I won’t care, and when people ask and I look down with tears prickling my brown eyes they’ll know they were Colby’s.

--

I gather myself after an hour of rattling sobs and neighbors who came to console me. They all looked heartbroken even though none of them really knew Colby and me. They just look at me with pity - filled eyes and tell me they’re so sorry and they’re there if I need anything. I just nod and act thankful until they leave. And after they do I fall back onto the couch, staring at the black TV screen and wondering why Colby had to die. Why’d it have to be him and not someone else? Then a nanosecond later I shake the thoughts and scold myself for wishing someone else dead.

But as my mother always told me: I was greedy and spiteful and liked to see people hurt. Which I think is untrue as does did Colby. I bite on my thumbnail and close my eyes and try to fall asleep. But after a few minutes of tossing and turning I give up and just stare at the blank screen once again. I want the man who listed the dead back again; I want him to tell me he got some names wrong and announce that Colby Granger didn’t die and that he was so sorry to his girlfriend that he almost gave a heart attack to. But he doesn’t and as I will the TV to turn on with sheer brain power I hear the doorbell ring. I groan and stand, hating how people think it’s a neighborly obligation to come console me after I found out my boyfriend died at war.

I zip my jacket closed and take a deep breath, feigning away the tears and composing myself as I open the door.

But instead of wrinkled eyes of one of my elderly neighbors I see green eyes I recognize. I recognize them because they’re Colby’s. I let out another deep-throated wail and leap into his open arms, tears, this time, of happiness coating my beady face. I press my lips to his chapped ones and I feel a chuckle vibrate against my chest.

“They said you were dead on the TV!” I pull him inside, lock the door, and kiss him again, hard on the lips. He detaches and looks into my eyes; his forehead against mine. “Maybe they got it wrong, because I’m right here.”

I guess those socks will get washed.