or flight

It was a stupid fight. I knew it when I started it. We both did. But I was drunk and there was something about the way he said it--everything he said was so patronizing. Like because I'm a girl and had a few drinks he needed to protect me. Maybe he was right. All I know is the last thing I wanted was to be anywhere near him.

It had been raining real hard for the past few days and it wasn't about to let up. I'd got us kicked out of the bar when I punched him in the eye, and we were waiting in the not-so-sheltered bus stop. I don't even remember what he said. I can perfectly see his face and expression and hear his inflections--that little smug "if you're fine then why'd you get us kicked out of the bar" smirk, all innocent and concerned--and eventually I just said "fuck you" and started walking away.

"Don't be like that, Melissa," he said. "Come back."

"Fuck you."

"I'm sorry. Really. Please don't go." He was following me now. I picked up my pace. He started to jog. "Melissa!"

I ran. I didn't care where I was going. I started at a sprint and didn't look back until I was blocks away and I didn't hear him calling after me, and then I kept running anyway. The rain soaked me to the bone I had no intention of stopping. I tripped a few times. I was too drunk to be doing this, and it was wet and dark. Sometimes I slipped, sometimes I tripped on the curb or something on the sidewalk. I was wet and bruised and bleeding. And I kept running.

Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that I had no idea where I was, that these buildings weren't familiar. If I was sober maybe I'd have stopped. But maybe not. I was drunk off my ass and running and bleeding and bruised and my jeans were torn and my lungs were burning and my muscles were sore and I was definitely alive. It was the best I'd felt since I don't even know when.

I mis-judged the curb and landed in a giant puddle, and the rush faded. I dragged myself onto the sidewalk and sat there curled up in the rain, cold and exhausted and frightened and confused. I didn't know where I was. I lay there for what seemed like hours but was probably more like fifteen minutes before I stood up. The heat had left my body, and now I was cold and numb and sore. I limped down the street in a direction that felt right until I found a bus stop. Some of the route numbers seemed familiar, and the schedule said they were still running.

Meanwhile the rain kept falling and I kept shivering and the pain from all the sore muscles and the scrapes and bruises started catching up to me and despite all that I couldn't keep from smiling.

the best years of our lives

Sometimes, there is only starting over to look forward to. Sometimes we can't even have that. I've fucked up the past four years of my life--or maybe just a little more than that now. It feels like forever ago that I was--

There was something about her smile, I think. I would have been happy spending the rest of my life making her smile. Maybe that's all there was. Maybe in the end everything was just about her smile and her lips and that spot just below her ear. Maybe we were always bound for shipwreck, and there was nothing we could do about it. There was a time I could still feel her lips on my neck, her arms around me, still hear the catch in her voice as she told me to leave. I still remember where it all happened, but as I sit there in the lobby of the hotel where she worked, somehow it's all gone.

--with her, and then it was taking flight and making every mistake I possibly could, because nothing worked anymore. I remember most of them pretty vividly. The ones I don't are usually because I was so drunk I couldn't remember anything. I still mostly know what happened, anyway. It's not that I made enemies so much as I lost friends. It was always me. Sometimes they just wanted to help.

She called me one night. Not quite out of the blue but close enough as far as I'm concerned. "I'm worried about you," she said. I told her to fuck herself. She said, "I still care about you. I--you were part of my life, you know? I don't want you to--"

I hung up. She tried again and I just let the phone ring. I deleted her number. I wouldn't see her again for two years.

After a while I found somewhere I could hide. Nobody really knew me. I thought maybe I could start over, and I did all right. I found new friends. I had a nice girlfriend. But there were always ghosts. I'd wake up--not screaming, but panicked, sweating, breathing heavily. Nightmares, I guess, but I just called them ghosts. Things that could have been, things I killed.

She called me again one day. It was winter. It was cold. She said she'd heard I was in town. She asked if maybe I wanted to get coffee. She was wearing a scarf. It's all I can think of when I think of her now. Her in a scarf and a winter coat, with her hands around a cup of coffee. Her smile is different. It's not for me anymore.

That doesn't go away if you hide. My girlfriend left--amicably, this time, headed south where I couldn't go. I wasn't sad to see her go. I'm not sure what that means. I've been seeing this new girl for a few weeks now. I think I like her, but it's hard to say. I've told her about the past four years, or maybe a little bit more. I'm trying to keep in touch with the people I ran away from.

I'm not sure if it's successful. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if this will work. I wanted to start over. Someone who wouldn't know who I am so I wouldn't have to be who I am. Maybe it's time to find a new home.

my eternal love

She is, if I had to describe her in a word, an excellent person. She does not agonize over the meaning of words, or the meaning of things, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. She is very beautiful and witty and clever. I would be lucky to have her.

She says she loves me.

I tell her, "Say again?"

"I said I love you," she says.

And I can't just say, "But what do you mean?" because it's always right there. I'm not sure why my panic instincts are kicking in now, but I know she sees my hand shaking as I take a sip of wine. Crestfallen seems like the best word for how she looks here. Or perhaps deflated. She dips a finger in her water and runs it along the edge of her wine glass. It hums faintly. She does this because it means she does not have to look at my eyes.

A week ago we were in the sort of place where you do not drink wine. She was finished with her meal, and stealing what remained of my french fries. She looked so happy, sitting at a greasy dive with me, running on cheap beer and fried food. I told her I enjoyed myself, and for just a moment she seemed ecstatic. She said there's nowhere she'd rather be.

Today there are no french fries to steal and the food is decidedly less greasy. It is the sort of place you go to for wedding proposals and important anniversaries. I am here thinking about love and eternity and trying to buy time. I'm thinking about missed opportunities. I'm thinking about the future.

After all the french fries were gone, we paid the check and walked home in the cool autumn air. Cold, not cool. Just enough to be uncomfortable. As I went to kiss her good night she said she had been sick for the past few days, she didn't want me to catch anything. I kissed her anyway, because it was the thing to do just then.

Now the moment is past and she is drawing up her dignity and saying, "It's really nice here," and what else is there for me to do but say "Yes, it is, I'm glad you came?"

days like this

She's talking about something like freedom or art or something else lofty, and all I can think about is how nice it is outside, and how there's just something satisfying about walking into the wind with my coat and hair flowing--and then she's expecting a response and I start with that little shrug I do, the "what can you do?" gesture with that little apologetic smirk, and that's not enough so I say something like "yeah, exactly," and then, speech over, the conversation lulls, and right away it's me saying, "Oh man, I read the dumbest thing in the New York Times" and then it's my turn for a story, and it's the sort of sarcastic thing where I can tell before I'm finished it's going to fall flat, but she's smiling and she asks me a question about it--the sort that means she was actually listening--and I shrug and try to answer, but she's quicker on her feet than I am, I wasn't expecting a response, and now I can't tell what she's thinking, or if that smirk is because she thinks I'm clever or because she thinks I'm stupid, and then she says something else and the moment's over and she's moving past it and she's talking about something else, and now I know she's made up her mind about it already, and I don't know what her decision is so I can't follow her lead, and she's finally completely lost me.

free

She is obsessed with locks and keys. She picked her first lock on her sixteenth birthday. Now she collects old keys, and she knows exactly what each one of them goes to. She likes to say that every key has its lock. There is a line in Pink Floyd which uses "pick her locks" as a euphemism for sex, and it is her favorite line in music, though she can't quite explain why. It has something to do with exploring, mystery, and freedom. As far as she is concerned, freedom is defined by boundaries--boundaries which exist to be broken.

She doesn't know how to tell the boy she has been casually dating that she is not interested in a relationship, especially because it is only true concerning him, specifically. She doesn't know that he isn't really, either, and is just too nice to tell her and too introverted to try to bring it up. He is philosophically inclined and wishes he were more adventurous, but he is afraid of everything--but most of all of being chained down.

His ex-girlfriend is primarily his ex because she was not philosophically inclined, and he mistook this as meaning that she was not intellectually curious. She is not worried about the meaning of things. She likes secrets, especially when she can share them with someone, and values spontaneity, though she sometimes wonders if this is a fault.

Before him, she dated me for a few weeks until the summer was over and I decided it was better to fly across the country, because my idea of adventurous is abandoning a good thing to go exploring something completely unknown, I think just to remind myself I'm still free. And mostly I'm happy with that, except last night I was drunk on the floor with my girlfriend, and it was 4 am and we were staring at the window and I asked her if freedom is worth it.

Freedom is her lips on my neck as she whispers that it definitely is, so long as freedom means us. It's a red wine hangover in the morning and going to brunch in the same clothes you were wearing last night, and telling stories over bad coffee about the little town you left behind. I'm not sure if it's worth it, but days like this it sure feels like it.