Bombs explode all the time in high intensity environments,
like living in a house of four other teammates. It’s a war zone at midnight, as
we slide through hallways, weapons raised, ready for defense. Some days the
battle is with each other, other days though, it’s the outside forces, our
bodies aching with pain from previous practices.
We have battled, had our worst moments of silence where
nothing was said, no punches were thrown, but we felt the blow in our abdomens
anyway. We double over gasping for air, gripping our stomachs at this grenade
landing in our cores. I would say that we kissed and made up, but that is what
caused the rough hit. You sit in my chair you fall asleep in it as I come home
to an apartment that should be ours. You tell me stories as you sit in the
circled pillow, and I listen. I ask and I understand while my ears bleed with
truths that I have been dying to hear, but now that I finally get them, I wish
they were all lies. I can’t take the feeling of the wet liquid coming out of my
ears, and my eyes are too dry from listening to you with them wide, unblinking.
I would say everything out of your mouth comes out chunk by
chunk, as the water does from the Falls in North Carolina. The ones that I swam
under this summer, they sprayed my face and pounded against my back. Actually,
they are more like the East Coast of Madagascar, on the Indian Ocean. Your
words have an undercurrent to them that as I sit and let them knock me over,
drag me a few feet forward, and then a few feet back, every now and then comes
a wave that is over my head. I try to run away, but I sit there, paralyzed by
what I am seeing and hearing. I am sucked into the depths of the ocean, where I
am sure I will drown now. Being alone with you. There is nobody here to save me
this time. But the undercurrent carries me on the top, and spits me out to the
beach once again. I roll my stomach to the ground and when my feet touch, I take
off to the beach as the water spreads throughout all the sand, soaking our
belongings and I gasp for air.
I don’t drown. I know if I continue to sit in the sound
waves of your voice, then another big one will come, and you will drag me out
to the deep end. Where feet will fail, and I won’t be so lucky as to make it
back again.
I know eventually I’ll drown; I’ll get lost at sea and won’t
have the strength to keep treading water. You say that I was one of the girls
you had a thing with, “we had a thing?” I ask, you nod and it is in that moment
when your head bobs up and down to the rhythm of old songs played in the gym,
when it was just you and I. Before our downfall, before the very thing that
should have made us shine, made us dull, and dark with so many scratches, and
chunks missing from us. I realize at this moment that your thoughts about us,
and the situation that has been ongoing between us since I was finally clean
freshman year up until now, are foggy. Your thoughts aren’t as clear as you
made them out to be, and you can take my word for it, I will get those thoughts
out of you someday.
It worked out this way because there were no other possible
outcomes. Some may argue otherwise, but it’s true. I couldn’t leave because I
am chained by my emotional freedom. I would never want to leave, and my acts of
proving everything to you, got you to stay. The stories, the days we had a
Coke, moving mats together, staying late in the gym with you, making food for
you when you come over. My curiosity to find you as we were falling apart
included listening to your favorite bands even though I didn’t appreciate their
language. I searched for you, and eventually we ended up in the same positions,
you and I.
You in my chair and me Indian style on the floor.
And this is where it gets unfair. When the innocence of a
chair and the floor are too precious to try to destroy again. Where even a bomb
set off by yours truly, I will take a bow as I continue, wasn’t enough to bring
us down. This is where tears should fall on the carpeted, cushioned seats
because the audience will see something that could be, almost was, but never
made it.
What would make us great? Our comfort for one, the way we
shamelessly dance around. Me in a sports bra, and half leotard, you in a prom
dress. Don’t ask about the dress, it was a joke at the time. Dancing around the
gym. It’s a sight for some red teary eyes that cried over news of attempted
suicides by my sixteen-year-old sister. You have no shame prancing around the
gym in a formal despite your bulging muscles that the dress accentuates.
Or the discomfort. When you leaned in, your face getting
close, the smell of your breath coming through my nostrils in the kitchen that
January. I know I left off the story with wanting this to happen, I sent it in
as my final draft, but here is what happened. I scream. I do a duck and dodge,
in my kitchen, with everyone watching. Something wasn’t right, and still we
managed to make it happen. Even when we searched for privacy, Kate sat on my
bed with her popcorn and watched her two best friends kiss.
Perhaps it is the ever growing, raw honesty that we seem to
come back to when we are alone. When I dare to challenge your decisions, or
your religious standing. Or when I tell you stories, again, you in the chair
and I on the floor. Your lips apologize but it is your eyes that mean it. I
wish I could hide my disappointment from you, but I can’t as I say, “it’s not
your fault.”
Yet somehow it is. I could just as easily blame you for my
hurt because of the fact that we have made our decisions, but there is still
something there. You always ask me what I am thinking, what new secret I am
keeping from you. It’s nothing, I respond, but you ask, you push. Are we really
doing this? You ask, quoting a line from the story of us. I follow you to the
hallway; it’s really nothing, just something between Shelby and I. This happens
all the time. You already know my thoughts, you know when I am lying to you,
but you ask anyway. We lay side by side on the couch, close, touching, but
nothing physical, nothing cute, nothing romantic. What are you thinking? You
already know, why would I have to tell you. Can’t we just lay here while you
read my thoughts? I’ve already told you everything you need to know.
Now there might have been more than one possible outcome for
a story like this, but it doesn’t matter because I am on the ground and you are
in the chair.
And I will not move until you do first.
All bets with past roommates are off. Done. No more, I want
nothing to do with the trash that those silly little joking contracts have
become. Because the testimony of last year is over, and I am not sure of the
ground that I am standing on, stone or sand?
All of my stories, my cards, my hands, are lying on the
floor in front of us. You beg me to finish the story and I can’t find a
satisfying solution because reality isn’t good enough, and fiction isn’t real
enough.
But I do it for you. You read and ask questions once again,
I let it slip that everything Callie says to Daniel was me saying it to you.
You don’t catch it, instead, you ask for more, and I tell you to give me more.
Give me something to write about besides truths and lies that mesh together to
make our lives one piece of incoherent writing.
That’s when it becomes your turn. Your move. Choose wisely.
