along the road

avoidance | 2014 | age 15

                     The drought comes to a tiresome end when we walk into the gates of the amusement park, and you hover an arm's length away from me.

               It doesn't seem to be by choice; it's not you, saying yes to me. Instead, it's you, saying yes to birthday girl, who invited you in the futile hopes that we would catch fire again.

                   But you're a broken match stick, and I've been burnt to the crisp.

           It's still a good day, though. The sun kisses my skin like I wish you would, and laughs flow from me like tears had from my eyes. I scream—loudly, dramatically, joyfully—on every ride, the rush of air unsettling my face, and, sometimes, forcing me to squeeze my wide eyes shut.

                    Once fatigue has drenched all of us, and hunger rumbles from the pit of our bodies, we begin to stroll towards a food stall. Somebody pays for the food—one of the boys, I recall, the one with the warm brown eyes that left a sweet taste on your tongue if you stared too long. And, by a constructed twist of fate—and birthday girl's hips—we sit beside each other, eyes only ever meeting when I attempt to stare at the spot on the wall behind you, words only ever caressing when you laugh at something that wasn't meant to tickle your earlobe.

             As these things go, we find ourselves at someone's home, lounging around her room. You're on the bed with birthday girl. You're laughing, rubbing her belly, digging your face into her neck. She attempts to slip away; she's far too sweet, too gentle, too affectionate, to let you down like this. She thinks she's sparing you, but she's not. She's a liar. You're both liars, in different senses of the word—you lie to me about kissing my cheek, and her deceptions lie in where she has forced me to place my hopes and dreams.

                      Things I should have never had, anyway. Mom always said that people were made to disappoint—the flaws stitched into our nature and pouring from the rips in our sinews made us this way, turned us into creatures that are, at some point, meant to slip from pedestals and bleed death onto white floors. Even though your hands have crushed what I wish to revive, I'm the one with the second heart that seeps into the tiles; I'm the boy with the broken bones, splinters lodged into my flesh, everything turning to dust within me.

              It's a slow process, one that I begin to notice as you replace every lover you've ever burned through.

                   We do not talk. Not much. Not enough to matter. Nothing but small talk, tiny tales gradually sinking into nonentity, irrelevancy, uselessness. It shakes me, rattles me to the core, because the universe used to coat your tongue when you thought of me.

             I wonder if, like me, some part of you has faded away-succumbed to the death that all feelings eventually meet, wallowed and withered into that state of nonexistence, the blackened ashes that fall apart once they meet your touch. I'm afraid that I've become that way, that, once you finally place your hand on me, I will dissipate, vanish, combust. I am afraid that you will truly destroy me, and the only traces of my existence will be embedded into the rough lines of your hands, upon the curves of your fingertips, within the split in your lip.

                        I am afraid that I am no longer human without you.

☀

                   She is no longer yours. Your girlfriend—or whatever you called her to her face, whatever let you slip into your cold bed without thinking of her, then thinking of me—has been separated from you, by your hands and your choice alone. You want me to be happy (I'm all yours now, we can be together), but something writhes within me. You want me to see you (I owe you a date, at very least, I owe you an apology), to have your face tremble above mine, to feel your lips and taste something other than my own blood and tears.

                            I begin to think that it's my fault; the beginning and end of that farce of a relationship, serving as the shirt you put on because you're afraid of being naked, of being vulnerable, of being as you were made, of living as you are. I think, he hurts me because he loves me, and he can't handle love. I think, he hurts me because he's afraid, and he can't ignore words that are stacked upon his chest. I think, he hurts me because he's blind.

                    Soon, I realize that only one of those is true.

                   When I finally agree to your apologetic proposition, I feel that second heart brushing against a rib, beating into my own heart, tracing the thin lining of my lungs. I start to sing, much to my mother's disapproval, much to the excitement of my classmates—who were aggravatingly aware of it all, of the saga that is my love life, of the cowardice that defines yours. In the joy of the week before, I don't question their sources; only accept their words of love and light.

                       It's strange that, as soon as we blaze and burn and brush against each other as we used to, a vanishing takes place. You lead the way this time, disappearing into a haze of no replies and unanswered calls, leaving everyone wondering where you want, having one thought spinning across my mind; what are you hiding?

                   Then, others: what're you running from? Why are you afraid of love? Why can't you see me? Why can't just us be enough?

                   You resurface from the ocean of yourself. I'm ecstatic, all doubts buried beneath a sprinkling of hope, but the second heart beats slower and slower as I read your words—hear your voice in my mind, digging up my fears, reviving my night terrors, awakening my inadequacies.

                Amidst your proclamations of I'm not ready and you deserve better (I know, I know, but I want you), I begin to wonder if we ever really stood a chance against each other. You, a tsunami. Me, the fruitful land that you decimate. Me, the house my mother built with nothing but her hands. You, the earthquake that splits my foundation into pieces that match yours from that blackened nail to the crack in your ceramic face. Me, a moth, attracted to irresistibility, bound to be set alight in this bright, bright corner of this wide, wide world. You, the flickering light that will be my death, because pests like me never learn that love isn't meant to burn.

☀

Situation number three.

I have nothing profound to say, lmao. Thank you for reading though. I love you, I love you, I love you.

—jay.