Dream with me.
Float away as if you never knew where the ground was to begin with; open yourself up as if it will help. Maybe it will. The taste burns my mouth — the memory of you. You, then, it would seem, burn my mouth. The roof, my roof, where the skin is hard and tough and bony, my tongue, my teeth, my gums — my mouth. Is that right? I don’t even know anymore. You are gone, so they tell me — they have to tell me something, I suppose, and now my fingers fall in rhythm of the music. “Stop calling me.” “Ah — that old trick.” I simply hadn’t learned — I’m sorry. I really am. Apologies don’t mean much, do they? “Not coming from you,” you would say. You never believed I felt sorrow. As strange and unreal as that sounds to me now.
The sky rumbles — thunder from miles away, coming to us at the speed of sound. “Looks like rain,” she said. I nodded, half numb. The cold had already set into me even before the rain had started. It really hadn’t been what she said, but the way she said it. When someone admits to you they have nothing to talk to you about, bored and indifferent:
“Hi. Is Kate there?”
“Speaking.”
“Oh. It’s me.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
” . . . “
“Zach.”
“Oh . . . “
” . . . “
“I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“I could tell.”
“So what’s up?”
“Nothing, just wanted to talk really.”
” . . . “
” . . . “
“Ok . . . “
“Well, good classes today?”
“I guess.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing, really.”
“I see. Well, what are you doing tonight? Homework?”
“I have to help my parents with some stuff. Listen, I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Um . . . well, okay.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you later then. Bye.”
“By-”
Click.
That happened more times than you might think over the years; the only change was the voice on the other end. You might realize it happened a lot. Perhaps. Maybe you don’t care at all, already.
Is it obvious how sad I was? Needy? Desiring? Can you at least notice things about me I couldn’t see then?
I wasn’t very bright and needed a lot of things to keep me going — which, I like to believe, is different from now. Attention. Girls. Now it seems I watch my needs bearing down on me, I just can’t change them. One step at a time, I suppose.
All these songs suck. My fingers slow down, stop tapping. My thoughts disintegrate.
The radio keeps going.
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