If These Walls Could Talk
The End
I fell in love with you that night, right on that bar stool where you bought me a drink I never finished.
I was so wrapped up in the slurred words that dripped out of your lips onto the floor that I didn't notice how long we spoke to each other. It must have been years, because by the end of the night, I felt so tired. Though you could barely call us drinking friends, I still managed to slip into total intoxication with you.
You were etched into my skin the moment you wrote your number on that used napkin under my glass. How easily you stumbled into my life without warning! That first night, I knew that I was in some way, even distantly, made for you--made to save you. And that was the ironic part! You were the one that saved me.
"There's just something great about gettin' sloshed on a Tuesday night," you'd mumbled into the other end of the phone.
I suppose you thought I was just another face you won't remember when you're gray and crippled. But me, oh . . . I will remember your face until the end of time. The color and the shape, the warmth--yes, the warmth. Even from a distance there was a whole other energy under you that lit you on fire. You lit everything, my life, with your eyes.
I don't know what scent it was--maybe it was the alcohol, or the remains of cheap sex--that clung to every fiber of your being, but it didn't stop me from wanting to wrap my arms around you and bury my head into your chest.
I don't know how or why I let you fall away from me, but you did. I was there to catch you, right there in a mass darkness, but my body refused; my limbs seemed paralyzed, unable to reach out to you in wretched selfishness, and have you be mine.
"Did you hear?" An unfamiliar resistance had filled my kitchen through the answering machine. "He's going away... I don't know where, so don't ask me, but don't make wild assumptions. Call me when you get this."
I remember the night I fell asleep with you, the burned scent of cinnamon still emanating from the candle on the night stand. It was the strangest moment of my life, and I didn't think it was possible, but it made me the happiest I had ever been. You told me the quiet drive was like the bottom of the ocean, floating along in the indigo shaded current towards the glow of twilight, a lonely angler fish darting through a crack in the earth.
It was night, very dark, with a clear sky cluttered with inflamed points of light that form geometric shapes in my irises. I could feel my corneas being corroded by an unknown substance--my tears? I didn't know; I couldn't even think about anything past you, I was so fixated, so tuned out from the world. The weak spine in my body twisted and bent to hug the dirty, plastic lawn chair with great urgency as I positioned my gaze towards the sky. My neck was sore from lack of sleep, but that didn't bother me anymore.
There was a cigarette in my hand, almost gone, and I hadn't taken a draw of it yet. I lit it a while before. I had placed it between my fingers just to watch the glow of red encapsulate the idea of inevitability. I brushed the end of it into the glass ashtray, watching the little cooling embers float into the fracture of light coming from headlights rising up the dirt road.
The cut of the engine startled me, even as I knew I had a visitor, out of my cracked chair. I guess you knew I was out here, because I could hear the soft brush of rocks and grass against your shoes. Around the corner, I saw your shadow, and my heart beat wildly out of control; I was sure I'd flat line any second.
You didn't say anything when we locked eyes. It was unusual that I felt so calm at that second, although it was very relieving to see those eyes. I don't think anything really needed to be said, let alone did, because there was nothing left to say... but do, there was.
Unthinkably, I pushed back the sliding glass door and stepped inside with the chilly gust of air. I figured you would follow, but I looked behind and you were still standing there with this unbearable look on your face. In the millisecond which I read your expression, all hope was lost. I knew it. You knew it.
Before I knew it, I had managed to sink into our-- my bed. I was drawn into the wild comfort of falling into a deep sleep, like becoming lost in a vast, white tundra, where there was no sound except for the rustle of your voice. It was then that the deafening boom of sadness became unsettled inside me. I wasn't certain if it was a dream or not, but at the second, I knew that this was the last time something like this would happen.
"Don't go," I murmured with anxiety. "You promise me."
I was so embarrassed by the scene which I was making, though it didn't help to think about it; keeping my thoughts on it so intensely only dampened my breathing; it was as if I'd taken a plunge for air in a bathtub.
"I won't leave you."
The ice in your voice signaled the impending departure which you were about to take. The inevitability of you being gone suddenly exploded inside of me into shards of smoldering glass, burning away at my ribs like damaged birch trees. It would not be the same. As much as it was a cruel thing to do to lay there with me, to pretend to love me, I wanted to toss and turn in your arms just so you would hold me tighter.
"Do you remember when you said you couldn't think of any other way to live, than live with me?" I asked, tremors erupting in my lungs that were frequent enough to break my bones. There was a long, dreadful moment of hesitation, and I could feel its force through the body heat exchanged between our hug... so violently that it made me want to vomit.
I don't think there is enough tragedy in the world to entomb the total despair which approached me with the force of an avalanche in the slow lag of time between certainty and loss. I wasn't sure if you said something after that long second of honesty, because that was when I began to feel the terrible fire in my ribcage. All I could do was clutch my chest under the hotness of a too-big comforter, just to ease the imaginary throb of acid eating away at my core. I couldn't think about it anymore. I had to just stop, and sleep.
Clothes on and all, that is exactly what I did.
I was so wrapped up in the slurred words that dripped out of your lips onto the floor that I didn't notice how long we spoke to each other. It must have been years, because by the end of the night, I felt so tired. Though you could barely call us drinking friends, I still managed to slip into total intoxication with you.
You were etched into my skin the moment you wrote your number on that used napkin under my glass. How easily you stumbled into my life without warning! That first night, I knew that I was in some way, even distantly, made for you--made to save you. And that was the ironic part! You were the one that saved me.
"There's just something great about gettin' sloshed on a Tuesday night," you'd mumbled into the other end of the phone.
I suppose you thought I was just another face you won't remember when you're gray and crippled. But me, oh . . . I will remember your face until the end of time. The color and the shape, the warmth--yes, the warmth. Even from a distance there was a whole other energy under you that lit you on fire. You lit everything, my life, with your eyes.
I don't know what scent it was--maybe it was the alcohol, or the remains of cheap sex--that clung to every fiber of your being, but it didn't stop me from wanting to wrap my arms around you and bury my head into your chest.
I don't know how or why I let you fall away from me, but you did. I was there to catch you, right there in a mass darkness, but my body refused; my limbs seemed paralyzed, unable to reach out to you in wretched selfishness, and have you be mine.
"Did you hear?" An unfamiliar resistance had filled my kitchen through the answering machine. "He's going away... I don't know where, so don't ask me, but don't make wild assumptions. Call me when you get this."
I remember the night I fell asleep with you, the burned scent of cinnamon still emanating from the candle on the night stand. It was the strangest moment of my life, and I didn't think it was possible, but it made me the happiest I had ever been. You told me the quiet drive was like the bottom of the ocean, floating along in the indigo shaded current towards the glow of twilight, a lonely angler fish darting through a crack in the earth.
It was night, very dark, with a clear sky cluttered with inflamed points of light that form geometric shapes in my irises. I could feel my corneas being corroded by an unknown substance--my tears? I didn't know; I couldn't even think about anything past you, I was so fixated, so tuned out from the world. The weak spine in my body twisted and bent to hug the dirty, plastic lawn chair with great urgency as I positioned my gaze towards the sky. My neck was sore from lack of sleep, but that didn't bother me anymore.
There was a cigarette in my hand, almost gone, and I hadn't taken a draw of it yet. I lit it a while before. I had placed it between my fingers just to watch the glow of red encapsulate the idea of inevitability. I brushed the end of it into the glass ashtray, watching the little cooling embers float into the fracture of light coming from headlights rising up the dirt road.
The cut of the engine startled me, even as I knew I had a visitor, out of my cracked chair. I guess you knew I was out here, because I could hear the soft brush of rocks and grass against your shoes. Around the corner, I saw your shadow, and my heart beat wildly out of control; I was sure I'd flat line any second.
You didn't say anything when we locked eyes. It was unusual that I felt so calm at that second, although it was very relieving to see those eyes. I don't think anything really needed to be said, let alone did, because there was nothing left to say... but do, there was.
Unthinkably, I pushed back the sliding glass door and stepped inside with the chilly gust of air. I figured you would follow, but I looked behind and you were still standing there with this unbearable look on your face. In the millisecond which I read your expression, all hope was lost. I knew it. You knew it.
Before I knew it, I had managed to sink into our-- my bed. I was drawn into the wild comfort of falling into a deep sleep, like becoming lost in a vast, white tundra, where there was no sound except for the rustle of your voice. It was then that the deafening boom of sadness became unsettled inside me. I wasn't certain if it was a dream or not, but at the second, I knew that this was the last time something like this would happen.
"Don't go," I murmured with anxiety. "You promise me."
I was so embarrassed by the scene which I was making, though it didn't help to think about it; keeping my thoughts on it so intensely only dampened my breathing; it was as if I'd taken a plunge for air in a bathtub.
"I won't leave you."
The ice in your voice signaled the impending departure which you were about to take. The inevitability of you being gone suddenly exploded inside of me into shards of smoldering glass, burning away at my ribs like damaged birch trees. It would not be the same. As much as it was a cruel thing to do to lay there with me, to pretend to love me, I wanted to toss and turn in your arms just so you would hold me tighter.
"Do you remember when you said you couldn't think of any other way to live, than live with me?" I asked, tremors erupting in my lungs that were frequent enough to break my bones. There was a long, dreadful moment of hesitation, and I could feel its force through the body heat exchanged between our hug... so violently that it made me want to vomit.
I don't think there is enough tragedy in the world to entomb the total despair which approached me with the force of an avalanche in the slow lag of time between certainty and loss. I wasn't sure if you said something after that long second of honesty, because that was when I began to feel the terrible fire in my ribcage. All I could do was clutch my chest under the hotness of a too-big comforter, just to ease the imaginary throb of acid eating away at my core. I couldn't think about it anymore. I had to just stop, and sleep.
Clothes on and all, that is exactly what I did.